With more than 200,000 residents (125,000 of them Chinese and the rest other Asian ethnicities), 7 Chinese newspapers, 12 Buddhist temples, around 150 restaurants and over 300 garment factories, Chinatown is Manhattan's most populous ethnic neighborhood, one of busy restaurants and exotic street markets. Since the Eighties, it has pushed its boundaries north across Canal Street into Little Italy and sprawls east into the nether fringes of the Lower East Side around Division Street and East Broadway.

A massive slab of a building on the eastern edge of Central Park between 80th and 84th Streets, the Met, as the museum's usually called, is the foremost museum in America and one of the great museums of the world. The Met's collection takes in over two million works of art. Any overview of the museum is out of the question: the Met demands many and specific visits or, at least, self-imposed limits.

Broadly, the museum breaks down into seven major collections : European Arts-Painting and Sculpture; Asian Art; American Painting and Decorative Arts; Egyptian Antiquities; Medieval Art; Ancient Greek and Roman Art; and the Art of Africa, the Pacific and the Americas.

Among the well hidden secrets Met collections are its Islamic Art (possibly the largest display anywhere in the world); European Decorative Arts; Greek and Roman Art; Arms and Armor Galleries (the largest and most important in the Western Hemisphere); a Musical Instrument Collection (containing the world's oldest piano); and the spectacular Costume Institute.

Despite the museum's size, initial orientation is not too difficult. There is just one main entrance, and once you've passed through it you find yourself in the Great Hall, a deftly lit Neoclassical cavern where you can consult plans, check tours and pick up info on the Met's excellent lecture listings.

Like the Lower East Side, which it abuts, the East Village, stretching between Houston and 14th streets and Broadway and Avenue D, was once a refuge of immigrants and solidly working class. It became home to New York's nonconformist intelligentsia in the early part of the twentieth century, and ever since has hosted its share of celebrated artists, politicos and literati. W.H. Auden lived at 77 St Mark's Place, the neighborhood's main artery. In the 1950s, the East Village was the New York haunt of the Beats - Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, et al - who would get together at Ginsberg's house on E 7th Street for declamatory poetry readings. Later, Andy Warhol debuted the Velvet Underground at the now-defunct Fillmore East , which played host to just about every band you've ever heard of - and forgotten.

During the nineties, escalating rents forced many people out, and the East Village is no longer the hotbed of dissidence and creativity it once was. Nevertheless, the area remains one of downtown Manhattan's most vibrant neighborhoods, with boutiques, thrift stores, record shops, bars and restaurants, populated by a mix of old-world Ukrainians, students, punks, artists and burn-outs feeding continuous energy through the streets 24 hours a day. Despite the vaudevillian circus of St Mark's Place and corporate attempts to turn the whole neighborhood into a Starbucks , principled resistance to the status quo can still be found.

To reach the East Village, take the #6 train to Astor Place, or the #N or the #R to 8th Street and Broadway

Signs made out of red, green and white tinsel effusively welcome visitors here, a signal perhaps that today's Little Italy is light years away from the solid ethnic enclave of old. The neighborhood is a lot smaller and more commercial than it once was, and the area settled by New York's huge nineteenth-century influx of Italian immigrants is encroached upon a little more each year by Chinatown. In fact, if you walk north from Canal Street along Mulberry or Mott streets to get here, the transition from the cultural heart of Chinatown to Little Italy's Big Tomato tourist schmaltz can be a little difficult to stomach. Few Italians still live here and some of the restaurants cater to tourists with valet parking and by piping the music of NY's favorite Italian son, Frank Sinatra, onto the street.

But that's not to advise missing out on Little Italy altogether. Some original bakeries and salumerias (Italian specialty food stores) do survive, and here, amid the imported cheeses, sausages and salamis hanging from the ceiling, you can buy sandwiches made with slabs of mozzarella or eat slices of homemade focaccia.

The best way to access Little Italy is by taking the #N, #R, #J, #M, #Z or #6 train to Canal Street and walking up Mulberry Street.
 

City Hall and Tribeca Since the city's early days, the seats of New York's federal, state and city government have been located around City Hall Park, and though many of the original buildings no longer stand, great examples of the city's finest architecture can be found here. While neighboring TriBeCa, to the west, does not hold the same historical allure, it does feature some of New York's most vibrant galleries, chic restaurants and bars.   Fifth Avenue and around. For the last two centuries, a Fifth Avenue address has signified social position, prosperity and respectability. Whether around its lower reaches on Washington Square or far uptown around the Harlem River, the street has been the home to Manhattan's finest mansions, hotels, churches and stores. Between 42nd and 59th streets, Fifth Avenue has always drawn crowds - particularly during Christmas, when department-store windows are filled with elaborate displays - to gaze at what has become the automatic image of wealth and opulence, or to visit Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall or the Museum

Financial District The Financial District has been synonymous with the Manhattan of the popular imagination for some time - its tall buildings and skyline, its busy streets, its symbols of economic strength and financial wheeling and dealing. There plenty to see in the area, and many visitors might find a pilgrimage to the site of the former Twin Towers -  hard to resist.