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They don't come any bigger than the Big Apple - king of the hill, top of the heap, New York, New York. No other city is arrogant enough to dub itself Capital of the World and no other city could carry it off. New York is a densely packed mass of humanity - 7.5 million people in 309 sq miles (800sq km) - and all this living on top of one another makes the New Yorker a special kind of person. Although it's hard to put a finger on what makes New York buzz, it's the city's hyperactive rush that really draws people here. Come take a bite!

In a city that is so much a part of the global subconscious, it's pretty hard to pick a few highlights - wherever you go you'll feel like you've been there before. For iconic value, you can't surpass the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Central Park and Times Square. The Museum of Modern Art has to be one of the world's top museums, and the Guggenheim Museum and American Museum of Natural History aren't far behind. Bookshops, food, theater, shopping, people: it doesn't really matter what you do or where you go in New York because the city itself is an in-your-face, exhilarating experience.

The area now known as New York City had been occupied by Native Americans for more than 11,000 years before Giovanni da Verrazano, a Florentine hired by the French to explore the northeastern coast, arrived at New York Bay in 1524. The area lay unmolested until English explorer Henry Hudson stumbled on it while searching for the Northwest Passage in 1609. 'It is as beautiful a land as one can hope to tread upon,' reported Hudson, who claimed the place for the Dutch East India Company.

Statue of Liberty The Statue of Liberty, the most enduring symbol of New York City - and indeed, the USA - can trace its unlikely origins to a pair of Parisian Republicans. In 1865, political activist Edouard René Lefebvre de Laboulaye and sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi went to a dinner party and came away with the notion of building a monument honoring the American conception of political freedom, which they would then donate to the Land of Opportunity. Twenty-one years later, on 28 October 1886, the 151ft (45m) Liberty Enlightening the World, modeled on the Colossus of Rhodes, was finally unveiled in New York Harbor before President Grover Cleveland and a harbor full of tooting ships. It's a 354-step climb to the statue's crown, the equivalent of climbing a 22-story building, and if you want to tackle it, start early to avoid the crowds - it's hard to contemplate the American dream with your nose to the tail of the person in front.

Empire State Building New York's original skyline symbol, the Empire State Building, is a limestone classic built in just 410 days during the depths of the Depression. Standing 102-stories and 1454ft (436m) above 5th Ave and 34th St, it's on the site of the original Waldorf-Astoria. The famous antenna was originally to be a mooring mast for zeppelins, but the Hindenberg disaster put a stop to that plan. One airship accidentally met up with the building: a B25 crashing into the 79th floor on a foggy day in July 1945, killing 14 people. Taking the ear-popping lift to the 86th or 102nd floor observation desks can entail a bit of waiting around, but it's worth it when you get there.

Central Park It's easy to see what a boon Central Park is when you're standing up the top of the Empire State: the 843 acre (337 hectare) rectangle of bobble-topped green bits are a welcome contrast to the concrete and traffic mosh jostling in the rest of Manhattan. When Central Park was officially opened in 1873 it was intended to be an oasis from the city's bustle. However the commotion which is New York seeps into the botanic calm in the form of joggers, skaters, musicians and tourists. Quieter areas are above 72nd St, where the crowds thin out and the well-planned landscaping becomes more apparent. There's a small zoo in the park, organized and casual sport (predominantly baseball and Frisbee) to watch or play, a swimming pool and various free performances.

Times Square Dubbed the 'Great White Way' after its bright lights, Times Square has long been celebrated as New York's glittery crossroads. The Square went into deep decline during the 1960s when the movie palaces turned XXX-rated and the area became known as a hangout for every colorful, crazy or dangerous character in Midtown. A major 'clean-up' operation removed most of the sleaze and now the combination of color, zipping message boards and massive TV screens makes for quite a sight. Up to a million people gather here every New Year's Eve to see a brightly lit ball descend from the roof of One Times Square at midnight, an event that lasts just 90 seconds and leaves most of the revelers wondering what to do with themselves for the rest of the night.

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Upper East Side is home to New York's greatest concentration of cultural centers: 5th Ave above 57th St is known as Museum Mile. The big daddy of these is the Metropolitan Museum of Art ('the Met'), New York's most popular tourist site, which functions something like a self-contained cultural city-state with three million individual objects in its collection. It's best to target exactly what you want to see and head there first, before culture and crowd fatigue sets in. Exhibitions range from Egyptian mummies through to baseball cards so even if (when?) you get lost, you're sure to stumble upon some interesting stuff.

Museum of Modern Art One of New York's greatest museums as well as one of its most architecturally significant buildings, the Museum of Modern Art, 11 W 53rd St, has a first-rate collection and puts on important retrospectives each year. Known as 'MOMA,' the museum boasts a permanent collection of masterpieces including Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Van Gogh's Starry Night and Piet Mondrian's Broadway Boogie-Woogie. Claude Monet's Water Lilies rates a whole gallery to itself. MOMA also has an outstanding photography collection and a very cool gift shop.

Other Museums In addition to the heavyweights, New York has dozens of museums that would bring tears of joy to any self-respecting Rotarian in a mid-sized town. Museum Mile's Solomon R Guggenheim Museum is a distinctive spiral space designed by Frank Lloyd Wright to hold one of the 20th century's greatest private bequests. The Whitney Museum of American Art, which specializes in contemporary art, is nearby.

American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West and 79th St, is most famous for its three large dinosaur halls but don't dismiss the rest of the permanent collection (which numbers about 30 million artifacts). Temporary exhibitions often have an emphasis on hands-on or interactive displays, making the museum extremely popular with kids. Couch potatoes should definitely check out the Museum of Television & Radio, a great place to head when it's raining or when you're simply fed up with walking. Over 75,000 US TV and radio programs are available from the museum's computer catalog and you can sit down and veg out at one of 90 consoles.

SoHo (from 'south of Houston') is the city's leading area for art galleries, clothing stores and boutiques selling oh-so-precious curios. The area is a paradigm of inadvertent urban renewal, having transmogrified from the city's leading commercial district post-Civil War, to a tuned-in artists colony in the 1950s, to the impossibly expensive gorgeousness of today. Its beautifully restored cast-iron buildings are some of the best examples of this style in the world. Some cutting edge cats (self-styled, of course) say it's all over for SoHo - too self-conscious, too trendy, too pricey - but the galleries are undeniably good and no-one's forcing you to buy autographed tea-cosies from hustler-designers with wares to sell.

Tribeca Though not as touristy or architecturally significant as SoHo, Tribeca has an even cooler etymology: it's the 'TRIangle BElow CAnal' St. This neighborhood of old warehouses and loft apartments has a fair share of sceney restaurants and bars, along with Robert De Niro's Tribeca Films production company. It's not unusual to spot a star hanging out at a local restaurant or bar, and Tribeca's desolation chic makes the area a favorite for fashion photographers. As yet, the neighborhood isn't overrun with boutiques and chain stores, and some of the warehouses are still derelict. It won't stay like this for long though - the music of Tribeca is a chorus of cash registers pinging in developers' heads.

Greenwich Village The Village (as New Yorkers call it) is one of the city's most popular neighborhoods, and a symbol throughout the world for all things outlandish and bohemian. The area's reputation as a creative enclave can be traced back to at least the early 1900s, when artists and writers moved in, followed by jazz musicians who played at famous (still functioning) clubs like the Blue Note and Village Vanguard. By the '40s the neighborhood was known as a gathering place for gays. The coffeehouses on Bleecker St hark back to New York's beatnik '50s and hippie '60s. Bob Dylan reputedly smoked his first joint in the Village, Jimi Hendrix lived here and the Rolling Stones recorded here. Greenwich Village is still a vibrant and varied area, packed with historic sites, cafes, shops, gay bars, and Washington Square Park, purportedly the most crowded recreational space in the world.