American Museum of Natural History

The American Museum of Natural History fills several city blocks on Central Park West, and its halls of dinosaurs, gems, mammals and meteorites have made it a favourite with families and science lovers for generations. With more than 40 permanent halls, it is too big for one visit, so it pays to choose a few areas and come back for the rest.

The fourth-floor fossil halls hold the museum's famous dinosaur skeletons, including the towering Tyrannosaurus rex. The Milstein Hall of Ocean Life is dominated by a life-size model of a blue whale suspended from the ceiling, and the dioramas of the Hall of North American Mammals are classics of their kind. The Rose Center for Earth and Space, the glass cube on the north side, houses the Hayden Planetarium, while the Richard Gilder Center, with its flowing cave-like atrium, adds an insectarium and the Davis Family Butterfly Vivarium.

The museum is open daily from 10am to 5:30pm and closes only on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. New York State residents with ID can pay what they wish for general admission; visitors from elsewhere pay the standard price. General admission covers the permanent halls and several exhibitions, while ticketed exhibitions such as the butterfly vivarium and the planetarium show cost extra and come with a timed entry. Pay-what-you-wish tickets cannot be combined with these.

Allow at least three hours, and a full day if you want to add a planetarium show. The main entrance is up the steps on Central Park West at 79th Street; accessible entrances are at 81st Street through the Rose Center and on Columbus Avenue at 79th Street through the Gilder Center. Eating is not allowed in the galleries, but there is a food court on the lower level and several cafés. School holidays and rainy weekends are the busiest times, so weekday afternoons are often calmer.

Take the B (weekdays only) or C subway to 81st Street–Museum of Natural History, which has an entrance straight into the museum; note that this station is not wheelchair accessible, and the nearest accessible station is 72nd Street on the 1, 2 and 3 lines. The M79 bus stops beside the museum. Central Park is across the street, and the New-York Historical Society is next door to the south.