The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York: four ways in
A $30 ticket with no booking, or a guide from €42.49 to €335.44. Closed on Wednesdays, open to 9 pm on Fridays and Saturdays, and 51 of 448 Fifth Avenue galleries flagged closed on 29 September 2026.
You can walk into the Metropolitan Museum on Fifth Avenue without booking anything. An adult ticket costs $30 at the desk or online, there is no timed entry, and New York State residents pay whatever they choose. Nobody needs a middleman to get in, and this page will not pretend otherwise.
What people actually have to decide is how they want to spend the hours inside a building with 448 numbered galleries. There are four ways to do it: alone with a ticket, in a guided group, on a themed or small-group route, or with a private guide. They sit on a price ladder that runs from the $30 desk ticket to €335.44 for two hours alone with an art historian, and the right rung depends on how much of the museum you want explained to you.
The scale is the reason the choice matters. The museum was incorporated in 1870, has been in its Central Park building since 1880, and in fiscal 2025 counted more than 5.7 million visitors; no museum in the United States draws more. Its online catalogue lists over half a million objects across 19 departments. A visit is a selection whether you plan it or not, and the four ways in are four ways of making it.
One thing to get straight before the details: no tour sold anywhere skips the line at the Met. The queue you see on the steps is the security check, which the museum applies to every visitor and every member. A ticket bought in advance, yours or a tour operator's, gets you past the ticket desks and nothing else.
The second is what this site sells. The museum forbids the resale of its admission tickets without its express authorisation and does not accept vouchers from outside sellers, so what you find here are guided visits with the ticket built in, never a bare ticket at a mark-up. If admission is all you want, buy it from the museum, online or at a ticketing desk on site, and spend the difference on lunch.
The Met is also two places. The Fifth Avenue building, at 82nd Street on the edge of Central Park, holds nearly everything. The Met Cloisters, the medieval branch in Fort Tryon Park near the northern tip of Manhattan, has its own hours but shares the ticket, as long as you use both on the same day. Every tour in this section takes place on Fifth Avenue: none of the three providers we checked sells a Cloisters tour that meets this site's review threshold.
Biblical Israel at the Met: Guided Tour of the Bible in Art
Ancient Egypt for Genesis and Exodus, Byzantine art for David and Solomon, then Roman Judea: a two-hour Met tour read through the Bible, entry fees included.
Family-Friendly Private Tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Henry VIII's armor, a Chicago Stock Exchange staircase and Van Gogh, told as stories for kids and teens on a private 2.5-hour Met tour. Entry fees included.
Ghost Stories at the Met: A Macabre, Interactive Museum Tour
Flying Dutchmen, funerary masks and eerie still lifes: a two-hour themed Met tour with handouts and activities, museum ticket included. Best for ages 10 and up.
Griffins, Goblets and Gold: Interactive Magical Arts Tour at the Met
A wizard's-eye view of the Met: griffins, goblets, part of a real castle and hands-on activities, supplies provided. Two hours, up to 6 per booking, ages 8+.
Met Museum Highlights and New York Stories Guided Tour
Egyptian tombs, Roman frescoes, Henry VIII's armor and the Impressionists, tied to New York's own story. 2.5 hours, fees included; the Met shuts Wednesdays.
Met Museum Highlights in Two Hours with an Expert Guide
An art guide leads up to 18 people past Monet's Water Lilies, Madame X, Rodin and the Tomb of Perneb in two hours, admission included. You stay on afterwards.
Met Museum Highlights Tour by City Wonders, Entry Ticket Included
City Wonders guides up to 20 people through the Met in two hours, entry ticket included: the Egyptian and American wings, Velazquez, Rembrandt and Van Gogh.
Met Museum Highlights Tour by ExperienceFirst, Ticket Included
An ExperienceFirst guide meets you past security with your ticket: two hours through Egyptian, Greek, Roman and European art, up to 10 travelers per booking.
Met Museum Small-Group Tour: Egyptian, European and Asian Art with Admission
Three departments in two hours: Egyptian Art, European Paintings and Asian Art with a live guide, in a group of 12 at most. Museum admission is included.
Metropolitan Museum of Art Guided Tour in Spanish with an Art Historian
Two hours at the Met in Spanish with an official New York guide: Egyptian art, Velázquez, El Greco and the Vélez Blanco patio. Museum entry is included.
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Guided Tour or Orientation with Entry Ticket
Small-group, private or a 30-minute orientation, each with Met entry and same-day access to The Met Cloisters. Private tours come in four languages.
Metropolitan Museum of Art Guided Tour with Entry Ticket
Museum entry plus a two-hour tour with a live guide through ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, the European masters and the Impressionists. Tips not included.
Metropolitan Museum of Art Highlights Guided Tour with Admission
Washington Crossing the Delaware, Vermeer, Van Gogh and a Roman villa bedroom: a two-hour Met highlights route in English, with museum admission included.
Metropolitan Museum of Art Private Guided Tour (2 Hours)
A private guide for up to 10 people, museum tickets included and time for photos. Meet at the Benjamin Duke House on Fifth Avenue and finish inside the Met.
Metropolitan Museum of Art Ticket and Guided Tour with a Storyteller Guide
Egyptian tomb models, famous masterpieces and overlooked oddities, told with wit by a storyteller guide. Groups of 15 or fewer, museum admission included.
Metropolitan Museum Private Tour for Kids and Families
A private 2.5-hour Met tour for families, run by a kid-focused operator: armor, Greek and Roman statues, Egyptian art and stories aimed at children.
Museum Hack Un-Highlights Tour of the Met, Ages 16+
Museum Hack guides chase the Met's quirky, lesser-known stories for 90 minutes. Admission is included, up to 10 per booking, aimed at visitors over 16.
Private Guided Tour of the Met for Groups of up to 8
Just your party and a guide for 2.5 hours at the Met: Henry VIII's armor, Vermeer, Van Gogh, the American Wing. Entrance fees included, evenings Fri and Sat.
Private Met Museum and Central Park Tour with Your Own Guide
A guide just for your party: Vermeer and Henry VIII's armor at the Met, then Bow Bridge and Strawberry Fields in the park. Entrance fees included, up to 8.
Semi-Private Met Museum Tour with a Maximum of 8 Guests
Never more than 8 guests: 2.5 hours at the Met with Henry VIII's armor, the Chicago Stock Exchange stairs and Vermeer. Runs with a minimum of 2 travelers.
The Art of Stories: Literary Guided Tour of the Metropolitan Museum
Myths, fables and fairy tales traced through the Met's collection on an interactive two-hour literary tour with a storytelling guide. For ages 12 and up.
The Met and Central Park Semi-Private Tour, 8 Guests Max
Babylon Tours pairs the Met with a Central Park walk over 5.5 hours, with a lunch break: Henry VIII's armor, Vermeer, Bethesda Fountain, Strawberry Fields.
The Met Highlights Guided Tour for Small Groups of up to 18
An art historian leads up to 18 people through the Met: Dendur, Henry VIII's armor, Madame X, the Greek and Roman galleries. Admission included, 2 or 3 hours.
The Met Private Tour: Masterpieces with an Art Historian
A private Met tour shaped around your interests by an art historian: Egypt, Vermeer, Sargent's Madame X. Admission included, up to 8 guests, non-refundable.
Ratings collected by Viator, Tripadvisor, Tiqets and Civitatis
The four pages of this section
Tickets and visiting on your own, guided tours, Egyptian art and the Temple of Dendur, and the Bible in the ancient galleries. Each one has the tours that match it.
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Metropolitan Museum guided tours, New York
Twenty guided tours of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, from €42.49: group highlights, semi-private groups of eight, private visits and themed routes.
20 experiences -
Egyptian art and the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum
The Temple of Dendur and the Met's Egyptian galleries: what the temple is, how it reached New York, which rooms are open now, and which of the museum's guided…
9 experiences -
Metropolitan Museum tickets and self-guided visits
What a Metropolitan Museum ticket costs and who pays less: $30 adults, pay what you wish only for New York residents, free entry schemes, and three products…
3 experiences -
Bible and the ancient world at the Metropolitan Museum
One Bible tour of the Metropolitan Museum and a self-guided route through what is open.
1 experience
The price ladder, from the desk to a private guide
Nearly every tour in this section includes admission, which makes the comparison simple: the $30 ticket is the floor, and whatever sits above it pays for a person who talks while you walk. A few themed and family listings are vague about the ticket, so read their inclusions before booking. Admission is priced in dollars; tour prices are in euros as the providers list them.
| Way in | Price | Length | Who is with you | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pay-what-you-wish ticket | Minimum $0.01 | As long as you like | Nobody | New York State residents and NY, NJ and CT students only |
| Standard ticket | $30 adult, $22 senior, $17 student | As long as you like | Nobody | Repeat visitors, people with a clear list |
| Group highlights tour with admission | €44.72 to €53.58 | 2 hours | Up to 12, 15 or 20 people, depending on the operator | A first visit with limited time |
| Themed tour with admission | €42.49 to €98.40 | 90 minutes to 2 hours | Small groups | Ghost stories, literature, Bible, the museum's less famous rooms |
| Semi-private tour | €118.52 | 2.5 hours | 8 people at most | A group tour without the crowd around the guide |
| Private tour | €118.52 to €335.44 | 2 to 2.5 hours | Your party only | Families, specific interests, a set pace |
Two things jump out. The first rung above the ticket is a short step: a two-hour group tour with admission costs around €45 to €54. The second is steep, because semi-private and private tours start at €118.52, more than double a group tour. What you are paying for at the top of the ladder is attention, not access. The galleries are the same for everyone, and so are the closures.
How guided groups work, and what the museum lets outside guides do, is on the guided tours page; ticket categories and free admission are on the tickets page.
Choosing a way in
Which of the four fits your visit
If you live in New York State, or study in New York, New Jersey or Connecticut, you pay what you like and have no reason to buy anything else unless you want a guide.
If this is your first visit and you have two or three hours, a group highlights tour is the efficient choice. A guide turns the Great Hall into a route, and you stay on in the galleries after the tour ends, on the same ticket.
If you already know what you came for, whether that is Egypt, arms and armour or the European paintings, buy the ticket and go straight there. A tour will spend most of its time on things you did not ask about.
If you are travelling with children, or with people who walk slowly, the private end of the ladder is the one that lets you stop when you need to. Two of the private tours in this section are built for families.
Opening days and hours
The two sites share a ticket but not a calendar.
| The Met Fifth Avenue | The Met Cloisters | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street | 99 Margaret Corbin Drive, Fort Tryon Park |
| Sunday to Tuesday, Thursday | 10 am to 5 pm | 10 am to 5 pm (March to October); 10 am to 4:30 pm (November to February) |
| Friday and Saturday | 10 am to 9 pm | Same as the rest of the week |
| Wednesday | Closed | Closed |
| Closed on | Thanksgiving, 25 December, 1 January, first Monday in May | Thanksgiving, 25 December, 1 January |
The Wednesday closure catches more visitors than anything else, and it also catches tour listings. Seven products in this site's catalogue list Wednesday departure times in their provider feeds (counted on 29 September 2026). Check the weekday before you pay, and if a Wednesday slot appears, ask the operator what it actually is.
The first Monday in May is the day of the Costume Institute benefit, the Met Gala, and Fifth Avenue is closed to visitors. The Cloisters stays open. The museum has not yet announced the date or theme of the 2027 Gala.
What is closed right now
Three areas are shut for building work, and the museum says so at the top of its own admission page:
The Cantor Roof Garden, Modern and Contemporary Galleries, and Ancient West Asia and Ancient Cyprus Galleries are closed for renovation.
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden closed on 19 October 2025, the last day of that year's commission, and is due back in 2030, larger and one floor lower. It is closed because of the new Tang Wing for modern and contemporary art, designed by Frida Escobedo, the first woman to design a wing of the Met, and also scheduled for 2030. Tour listings that still promise the rooftop view are out of date.
The Ancient West Asian and Cypriot galleries, with the Assyrian reliefs and the winged lamassu, are scheduled to reopen in 2027. The Bible page explains what that means for anyone who came for them.
Then there are day-to-day closures. The museum keeps a list of every gallery with an open or closed flag. On 29 September 2026 it marked 51 of the 448 numbered galleries on Fifth Avenue as closed, and none of the 18 at the Cloisters. The list moves fast: the Temple of Dendur (gallery 131), flagged closed on 26 September, was listed as open again on the 29th. No reason is given, and many closures look temporary. The practical rule: if one room is the reason for your trip, check the list on the museum's website the day before.
How long to spend
The museum does not publish a recommended visit length, so this is our own reading. The Fifth Avenue site is 21 structures joined into one building over five floors, and the museum describes it as over two million square feet. Nobody sees it in a day.
The tours in this section settle on two hours as the standard length, with a handful at 90 minutes or two and a half hours and two combined museum-and-Central-Park tours at five and a half. Two hours covers Egypt, the Greek and Roman galleries and the European paintings upstairs at a pace where you remember what you saw.
A realistic plan for a first visit is three to four hours in one go: a two-hour tour or a two-hour route of your own, a break, then an hour in whichever department caught your attention. If you add the Cloisters, the museum suggests the M4 bus from Madison Avenue and 83rd Street to the last stop, and warns that it is the slow option.
Getting there
Subway, bus and the one garage
The museum's own directions are the ones to trust. From the East Side, take the 4, 5 or 6 train to 86th Street and walk three blocks west to Fifth Avenue, about ten minutes. The M1, M2, M3 and M4 buses stop at 82nd Street on Fifth Avenue going downtown and at 83rd Street on Madison going uptown. From the West Side, the M79 and M86 cross Central Park.
Driving is harder than it looks. The garage at Fifth Avenue and 80th Street is open only on weekday evenings and at weekends, parking is not guaranteed, and vehicles taller than 6 feet 6 inches will not fit. Tour coaches may unload on Fifth Avenue but not wait there.
The museum sits inside the edge of Central Park, and most people combine the two. That belongs to the neighbourhood section.
The museum in numbers, and which ones to trust
Figures about the Met circulate in several versions. These are the ones that can be checked.
| What | Figure | Source and date |
|---|---|---|
| Objects in the online catalogue | 502,881 records | Museum collection API, 29 September 2026 |
| Curatorial departments | 19 | Museum collection API |
| Numbered galleries in the museum's list | 466 (448 on Fifth Avenue, 18 at the Cloisters), of which 51 flagged closed | Museum website data, 29 September 2026 |
| Visitors, fiscal 2025 | More than 5.7 million | Museum annual attendance release, July 2025 |
| Record year | 7.35 million, fiscal 2018, on three sites | Museum attendance releases |
| Floor area, Fifth Avenue | Over two million square feet | Museum reopening release, August 2020 |
| Open Access images | More than 406,000, free to reuse (CC0) | Museum image policy, since 7 February 2017 |
Two cautions. The museum publishes no single count of the works it owns: the API counts catalogue records, while its collection pages give rounded holdings that do not match them (photographs are listed as over 75,000, against about 39,500 catalogued). So when a page tells you the Met has two million works, ask which list the number came from. And attendance is still below the 2018 peak, when the museum had three sites.
How the museum got here
The institution's milestones; admission rules have their own history, on the tickets page.
The origins
1870
Incorporated
The New York State Legislature grants the Act of Incorporation on 13 April.
1872
First opening
The museum opens on 20 February in a building at 681 Fifth Avenue, well south of where it stands now.
1880
Into Central Park
It moves into its own building on the park, a red-brick design by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould.
1902
The Great Hall
The Beaux-Arts entrance hall by Richard Morris Hunt opens in December, finished after his death by his son.
The growth
1938
The Cloisters
The medieval branch opens in Fort Tryon Park, built around a collection bought in 1924 with Rockefeller funds.
1978
The Temple of Dendur
The Egyptian temple goes on show on 27 September, eleven years after it was assigned to the museum.
2016
The Met Breuer
A third site opens on Madison Avenue in March, for modern and contemporary art.
2017
Open Access
From 7 February, images of public-domain works are released for free reuse.
Today
2020
Closed, then reopened
Shut on 13 March, Fifth Avenue reopens on 29 August. The Met Breuer closes for good.
2025
Roof closes, a wing returns
The Rockefeller Wing reopens on 31 May; the Cantor Roof Garden closes on 19 October.
2027
Ancient West Asia and Cyprus
New galleries for the Assyrian and Cypriot collections are scheduled to open.
2030
The Tang Wing
The new modern and contemporary wing and a larger roof garden are due to open.
Previously, The Met had not been closed for more than three days in over a century.
Before you go to the Metropolitan Museum
Do I need to book the Met in advance?
No. The museum states that advance tickets are not required and there is no timed entry for general admission. Buying online only saves the ticket desk.
Is the Metropolitan Museum open on Wednesdays?
No. Both the Fifth Avenue building and the Cloisters are closed every Wednesday. Fifth Avenue is also closed on Thanksgiving, 25 December, 1 January and the first Monday in May.
Is the rooftop garden open?
No. The Cantor Roof Garden closed on 19 October 2025 for the construction of the Tang Wing and is scheduled to reopen in 2030.
Does a guided tour skip the line?
It skips the ticket desk, because admission is already bought. It does not skip security, which is the only real queue at the Met.
Is the Met included in the New York CityPASS?
No. None of the big city passes, the New York CityPASS, the New York C3 or the Go City passes, includes the Met (checked on their own pages on 29 September 2026), and the museum states that it does not accept vouchers or passes from outside ticket sellers. Our page on other New York museums lists which of them a pass does cover.
How much time do I need at the Met?
For a first visit, three to four hours: two hours on a route, a break, then time in one department. A full day still leaves most of the building unseen.
Guided tours of the Metropolitan Museum
Guided visits of the museum with admission included. Check the weekday before booking: the museum is closed on Wednesdays.
Family-Friendly Private Tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Henry VIII's armor, a Chicago Stock Exchange staircase and Van Gogh, told as stories for kids and teens on a private 2.5-hour Met tour. Entry fees included.
Ghost Stories at the Met: A Macabre, Interactive Museum Tour
Flying Dutchmen, funerary masks and eerie still lifes: a two-hour themed Met tour with handouts and activities, museum ticket included. Best for ages 10 and up.
Griffins, Goblets and Gold: Interactive Magical Arts Tour at the Met
A wizard's-eye view of the Met: griffins, goblets, part of a real castle and hands-on activities, supplies provided. Two hours, up to 6 per booking, ages 8+.
Ratings collected by Viator and Tripadvisor
Other museums in New York
MoMA, the Guggenheim, the Whitney and the Natural History Museum, with prices, free days and which of them a city pass covers.
Data verified on. Prices, hours, closures and gallery counts from the museum's own website data and releases; tour prices from provider listings.