The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the largest and most-visited museums in the world—and one of the best museums in New York City. The Met’s staggering collection spans Paleolithic artifacts to post-impressionist masterworks and features some 1.5 million artworks and objects. Exploring its hundreds of rooms would take months. Instead, book a guided tour of its galleries, viewing highlights ranging from King Henry VIII’s suit of armor to John Singer Sargent’s Madame X.

If there’s one thing that the Met doesn’t have, it’s a robust collection of modern and contemporary art. That’s where the Museum of Modern Art, or MoMA, comes in. Another of the top art galleries in New York City, the museum is home to an exceptional array of masterpieces, from Claude Monet’s Water Lilies to Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair. Book your skip-the-line admission tickets in advance to guarantee your entry.

If you’re exploring the city's cultural institutions, it might be tempting to stay uptown and visit the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Neue Galerie. But it’s also worth hopping on a downtown train to the Whitney Museum of American Art. The museum itself decamped from its original Upper East Side digs to its current Meatpacking District home in 2014, and its luminous new building shows off masterworks by artists from Edward Hopper to Georgia O’Keeffe in their best light.

Founded more than 150 years ago and billed as one of the world’s preeminent scientific and cultural institutions, the American Museum of Natural Museum is a highlight of the Upper West Side, and a star of the silver screen—Night at the Museum, anyone? The landmark museum is home to a staggering 30 million specimens and tells the story of 4.5 billion years of Earth’s history. Grab your tickets in advance and look out for highlights from dinosaur fossils to a taxidermied Siberian tiger.

A close doppelganger of the Met, with its neoclassical grandeur and prime location on the edge of a popular city park (the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in this case, plus Prospect Park just adjacent), the Brooklyn Museum has the second-largest museum collection in the Big Apple. It’s also one the top New York City museum highlights, with more than 500,000 objects that span everything from ancient Egyptian artifacts and medieval altarpieces to period rooms.

Situated on the edge of “El Barrio”—Spanish or East Harlem, as residents call it—El Museo del Barrio is an essential stop thanks to its unique focus on Latinx art and culture from the United States, the Caribbean, and wider Latin America. El Museo was established in the 1960s as a counterpoint to other institutions, which had long overlooked those voices and works. Today, its 8,500-strong permanent collection includes everything from pre-Columbian artifacts to modern and contemporary art.

Many decades before the Lower East Side became one of the coolest neighborhoods in Manhattan, the area was infamous for its tenements—overcrowded, low-quality apartment buildings that housed new immigrants to New York City. The Tenement Museum offers a uniquely immersive way to experience this history with a number of guided tour options that walk visitors through restored tenement apartments, telling the stories of the real families who once occupied them.

One of the most important historical museums in New York City is the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration. Located right in the New York Harbor, Ellis Island was once the busiest immigrant processing station in the country; during its heyday, it welcomed 1.25 million new immigrants in a single year. Today, visitors can tour the dormitories and discover a range of artifacts. Thanks to its proximity to Liberty Island, the museum is a featured stop on numerous Statue of Liberty tours.

One of the most moving New York City museums, the 9/11 Memorial and Museum captures the devastating history of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Located at the World Trade Center in the Financial District, the museum tells the story of 9/11 through a collection that spans first-person testimonies, multimedia archives, and artifacts. Book admission tickets in advance and quietly explore the galleries that pay homage to those who perished in this horrifying event.