The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Backing onto Central on Fifth Avenue, the immense Metropolitan Museum of Art charts 5,000 years of applied and fine arts from all ends of the earth.

At the largest gallery in the United States you can chase your sense of curiosity down any number of rabbit-holes, marvelling at Sumerian cuneiform tablets, Chinese calligraphy, Classical sculpture, Egyptian mummies, Old Masters, Moorish textiles, Rococo fashion, armour worn by European monarchs, invaluable musical instruments, and that’s just to get started.

You could spend a whole day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and leave knowing that there was more to see.

But a few of the indispensible exhibits are the transposed Egyptian Temple of Dendur (15BC), Raphael’s altar painting of Madonna and Child (1504), Rembrandt’s Aristotle with a Bust of Homer (1653), Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze (1851) and van Gogh’s Self Portrait with Straw Hat (1887).