How to get to the Metropolitan Museum, New York: subway, bus and entrances

The Met Fifth Avenue stands at 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, on the eastern edge of Central Park. The simplest way there is the 4, 5 or 6 subway to 86 St on Lexington Avenue, then a walk of about half a mile, which the museum puts at ten minutes. Buses M1, M2, M3 and M4 run past the door on Fifth and Madison Avenues, and the M79 and M86 cross Central Park from the West Side. The Met Cloisters, the medieval branch, is at the north tip of Manhattan: take the A train to 190 St and walk ten minutes through Fort Tryon Park.

This page goes further than the museum's own directions. It checks which stations the MTA rates as step-free, where the buses really stop, what the parking garage offers, and how to get from one Met site to the other on the same ticket. Route details come from the museum's directions page and from the MTA's own timetables and station data, read in September 2026.

The building fills the stretch of Fifth Avenue between roughly 80th and 84th Streets, inside the park's eastern wall. Every public door is on the Fifth Avenue side. The west facade looks onto the park and Cleopatra's Needle, but there is no public entrance there, so if you arrive through Central Park you have to walk around the building to the avenue.

There are three ways in:

• The main steps at 82nd Street, the entrance in every photograph. You climb to the Great Hall, where the ticket desks are.
• The 81st Street entrance, at street level, just south of the steps. It is one of the two step-free entrances, the entrance the museum names for strollers, and the place where manual wheelchairs are lent on a first-come basis. Members also use it.
• The parking garage at 80th Street, the second step-free entrance, reachable from the garage.

Whichever door you pick, you go through a security check first; the museum asks visitors to plan for lines there. A ticket bought online lets you go from security straight to a gallery entrance, but nothing shortens the bag check itself. What you can and cannot carry is on our rules and bags page.

The museum's own advice is the Lexington Avenue line: 4, 5 or 6 train to 86 St. The 4 and 5 are express trains and the 6 is local, and all three stop there. Come up on 86th Street, walk three avenue blocks west (Park, Madison, then Fifth) and four short blocks south along Fifth Avenue to 82nd Street. The museum calls it about half a mile and ten minutes, which matches our own measure.

Check one thing before relying on that station if you need a lift. In the MTA's own station dataset, 86 St on the Lexington line is rated partially accessible, with the note "Uptown local only" (MTA Subway Stations, data.ny.gov). The step-free path serves the platform of northbound 6 trains, not the express trains and not the downtown side.

The alternative the museum does not mention is the Q train to 86 St on Second Avenue. It opened in 2017, and the MTA rates it fully accessible. The Q runs from Times Square and 57th Street, so from Midtown West it is often the most direct line anyway. The walk is longer: five avenue blocks west to Fifth (Third, Lexington, Park, Madison, Fifth) and a few blocks south, about 0.8 miles, or 15 to 20 minutes on level sidewalks.

From the West Side, the museum suggests the 1 train to 86 St and then the M86 crosstown bus, or the B or C train to 81 St-Museum of Natural History and then the M79 crosstown bus. On a fine day you can skip the bus from 81st Street and walk through the park instead; it is about 0.8 miles on the paths and takes roughly 20 minutes.

One fare covers any subway ride or local bus ride, whatever the distance: $3 as of September 2026, according to the MTA fare page. You pay by tapping a contactless bank card, a phone or an OMNY card at the turnstile or on the bus. Since January 1, 2026 you can no longer buy or refill a MetroCard, so do not go looking for one. Two rules help visitors: you get one free transfer within two hours between subway and bus or between two buses, and fares are capped at $35 a week for subway and local buses on the same card or phone.

Fifth Avenue runs one way south and Madison Avenue one way north, so the four north-south routes (M1, M2, M3, M4) use a different avenue in each direction. Coming down from Harlem or Washington Heights you ride on Fifth; coming up from Midtown or Penn Station you ride on Madison.

Here the museum's text and the MTA's timetable part ways. The museum says to ride along Fifth Avenue "to 82nd Street". In the MTA's published schedule (Manhattan bus feed of August 2026) there is no stop at 82nd Street: southbound buses on Fifth stop at 84th Street and 80th Street, which put you a block or two either side of the steps. Northbound on Madison, local buses stop at 83rd Street, the stop the museum names, while limited-stop buses skip it and stop at 79th and 86th.

Across the park, the M79 runs along 79th Street and the M86 along 86th Street. Both are Select Bus Service routes, with fewer stops than a local bus and the same $3 fare, and both stop at Fifth Avenue.

On Fifth Avenue the bus stops are at 84th and 80th Streets, not at 82nd. On Madison, get off at 83rd Street and walk one block west.

The museum has its own garage entrance on Fifth Avenue at 80th Street, but read the conditions carefully. Public parking is offered only on weekday evenings and at weekends, the museum warns that with reduced capacity a space is not guaranteed, and it links to an online reservation run by the garage operator. The published hours for the public were Monday to Friday from 6 pm to midnight and around the clock on Saturday and Sunday (September 2026). Clearance is 6 feet 6 inches, and cars may be valet parked. Rates are set by the operator, so check them when you book. In practice a car is only useful for a Friday or Saturday evening visit or a weekend.

Cyclists have it easier: bicycle racks inside the same garage are free during museum hours.

A taxi or rideshare drops you at the curb on Fifth Avenue. The museum's directions name no dedicated drop-off zone. If anyone in your group needs to avoid the steps, ask for 81st Street and Fifth Avenue, the step-free entrance, rather than the address at 82nd.

Yes, and in good weather it is the best part of the trip. Rough distances on foot, measured along the streets and park paths:

• From Belvedere Castle, in the middle of the park at the level of 79th Street: about 0.4 miles, ten minutes. Walk east past the Turtle Pond and Cleopatra's Needle, then around the museum to Fifth Avenue.
• From Bethesda Terrace (72nd Street): about 0.7 miles, 15 minutes, north through the park or up Fifth Avenue.
• From the American Museum of Natural History, on the other side of the park: about 0.8 miles, 20 minutes.
• From Grand Army Plaza, 59th Street and Fifth Avenue: about 1.2 miles, 25 minutes along Fifth Avenue or on the park's east drive paths.
• From MoMA on 53rd Street: about 1.5 miles, 30 to 35 minutes.
• From Grand Central or Times Square: about 2 miles or a little more, 40 to 45 minutes. Most people take the subway from here.

A New York north-south block is about one twentieth of a mile, so every 20 numbered streets add roughly a mile to your walk. Avenue blocks on the East Side are much longer, three or four times a street block.

The Cloisters stand at 99 Margaret Corbin Drive, on a hilltop at the north end of Fort Tryon Park, about six miles north of the Met Fifth Avenue. The park itself is a destination: 67 acres laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and opened in 1935, according to NYC Parks.

By subway, the museum recommends the A train to 190 St. Leave the station by elevator (the platform is deep underground), then walk north along Margaret Corbin Drive through the park for about ten minutes. You can also change to the M4 bus outside the station and ride one stop to Margaret Corbin Dr/Cloisters. From 59 St-Columbus Circle, the A train takes about 20 minutes to 190 St.

Two cautions. First, the museum itself warns that track maintenance and line closures may affect the A train at weekends; check the MTA site on the morning you go. Second, 190 St has elevators but the MTA does not rate it as an accessible station. For a fully step-free trip the museum's route is the A train to 181 St, which is accessible, then the M4 bus north for seven stops to Margaret Corbin Dr/Cloisters. Mind the name: the 1 train also has a station called 181 St, a few blocks east, and the MTA does not rate that one accessible. The 1 train runs east of the ridge, so from its stations the Cloisters mean a long uphill walk.

By bus, the M4 runs from Midtown up Madison Avenue, past the Met, and on to the Cloisters, so it links the two sites with no change. The museum puts the ride from Madison Avenue at 83rd Street at about 1 hour 25 minutes. The MTA timetable is a little kinder: our reading of its August 2026 schedule gives a median of 82 minutes on weekdays, 71 on Saturdays and 64 on Sundays, before traffic. Only northbound buses signed Cloisters go all the way to the museum; the others end at Fort Washington Avenue and Cabrini Boulevard, by the 190 St station, which leaves you the same ten-minute walk through the park.

Coming back, note another quirk of the timetable: southbound M4 trips are scheduled to start at Fort Washington Avenue and Cabrini Boulevard, not at the Cloisters stop. If no bus is waiting at the museum, the walk down to that stop is the same ten minutes through the park.

By car, take the Henry Hudson Parkway north to the first exit after the George Washington Bridge, signed for Fort Tryon Park and the Cloisters. Parking in the park is free city parking, with two spaces for disabled permit holders facing the museum. Citi Bike docks exist at the foot of the hill on Broadway and Dyckman Street, but the museum sits well above them, so expect to push.

Yes, and your ticket already pays for it: every Met admission ticket covers both sites on the date printed on it, exhibitions included. The question is the order.

Our advice is to start at the Cloisters. It is the smaller museum, it closes first (4:30 pm in the four winter months, 5 pm the rest of the year), and it never opens late, while the Met Fifth Avenue stays open to 9 pm on Fridays and Saturdays. A morning at the Cloisters and an afternoon on Fifth Avenue uses both schedules; the reverse order leaves you racing north against a closing time.

A realistic day looks like this. Take the A train from Midtown around 9:30 am and be at the Cloisters for the 10 am opening. Two to two and a half hours covers the galleries and the three gardens. Leave around 12:30 pm, either on the A train south (change to the B or C at 125th Street for 81st Street, then the M79 across the park) or on the M4 bus the whole way down to Fifth Avenue. Allow about an hour door to door by subway, or about an hour and 25 minutes if you ride the M4 the whole way. That still leaves you three or four hours at the Met Fifth Avenue, and up to seven on a Friday or Saturday.

Going the other way in winter? Leave Fifth Avenue by 2 pm at the latest. With the M4 taking over an hour on weekdays, a later start gives you very little time before the Cloisters close at 4:30 pm.

The museum's directions list no shuttle between its two sites; the free shuttle at the Cloisters is only for step-free access at that building. For what to see once you arrive, read our Cloisters guide, and for day plans that include this combination, the itineraries page. Opening hours for both sites, month by month, are on our hours page.