Offshore, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island comprise the first section of New York (and America) that most 19th-century immigrants would have seen. The Financial District takes in the skyscrapers and historic buildings of Manhattan's southern reaches and was hardest hit by the destruction of perhaps its most famous landmarks, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Just northeast is the area around City Hall, New York's well-appointed municipal center, which adjoins TriBeCa, known for its swanky restaurants, galleries, and nightlife. Moving east, Chinatown is Manhattan's most populous ethnic neighborhood, a vibrant locale that's great for food and shopping. Nearby, Little Italy bears few traces of the once-strong immigrant presence, while the Lower East Side, the city's traditional gateway neighborhood for new immigrants, is nowadays scattered with trendy bars and clubs. To the west, SoHo is one of the premier districts for galleries and the commercial art scene, not to mention designer shopping. Continuing north, the West and East Villages form a focus of bars, restaurants, and shops catering to students and would-be bohemians -- and of course tourists. Chelsea is a largely residential neighborhood that is now mostly known for its gay scene and art galleries that borders on Manhattan's old Garment District. Murray Hill contains the city's largest skyscraper and most enduring symbol, the Empire State Building.

Beyond 42nd Street, the main east-west artery of midtown, the character of the city changes quite radically, and the skyline becomes more high-rise and home to some of New York's most awe-inspiring, neck-cricking architecture. There are also some superb museums and the city's best shopping as you work your way north up Fifth Avenue as far as 59th Street. Here, the classic Manhattan vistas are broken by the broad expanse of Central Park, a supreme piece of 19th-century landscaping, without which life in Manhattan would be unthinkable. Flanking the park, the mostly residential and fairly affluent Upper West Side boasts Lincoln Center, Manhattan's temple to the performing arts, the American Museum of Natural History, and Riverside Park along the Hudson River. On the other side of the park, the Upper East Side is wealthier and more grandiose, with its 19th-century millionaires' mansions now transformed into a string of magnificent museums known as the "Museum Mile," the most prominent being the vast Metropolitan Museum of Art. Alongside is a patrician residential neighborhood that boasts some of the swankiest addresses in Manhattan, and a nest of designer shopping along Madison Avenue in the seventies. Immediately above Central Park, Harlem, the historic black city-within-a-city, has a healthy sense of an improving go-ahead community; a jaunt further north is most likely required only to see the unusual Cloisters, a 19th-century mock-up of a medieval monastery, packed with great European Romanesque and Gothic art and architecture.

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