The problem with the Met is its size
The Metropolitan Museum of Art covers two million square feet. It has over two million objects in its permanent collection, of which roughly 5,000 are on display at any given time. If you spent thirty seconds with each work on view, you'd be there for two days. This is not a museum you conquer. It's a museum you navigate.
The first thing to do when you arrive is resist the impulse to see everything. Pick three or four departments, decide on a rough order, and let the rest go. You'll come back. Everyone comes back.
The Temple of Dendur
Start in the Egyptian Wing, and go straight to the Sackler Wing at the far end. The Temple of Dendur was built around 15 BCE and relocated stone by stone to New York after Egypt's Aswan Dam threatened to submerge it. The Metropolitan was one of a handful of institutions offered pieces of ancient Egypt in gratitude for American funding of the preservation effort — they asked for and received an entire temple.
The temple sits inside a glass pavilion with the pool in front of it and Central Park barely visible through the windows behind. The graffiti scratched into the sandstone by 19th-century tourists — names, dates, "was here" — is part of the official record now. The Met left it.
Dutch and Flemish paintings
The 17th-century Dutch galleries hold the Met's Vermeer collection — five paintings, which is an extraordinary concentration given that only around 34 survive in the world. Young Woman with a Water Pitcher is the most meditative: a woman at a window, morning light, nothing happening, everything present. Vermeer painted very slowly and very small. Being this close to one is rare.
Rembrandt's Aristotle with a Bust of Homer is nearby — a philosopher touching a sculpture of a poet, thinking about what it means to be remembered. Philip IV of Spain commissioned it. It was considered one of Rembrandt's greatest works in his own lifetime, then largely forgotten, then rediscovered. The Met paid the equivalent of several million dollars for it in 1961 — the highest price ever paid at auction at the time.
Arms and Armor
The Arms and Armor hall is one of the most underrated rooms in any museum in the world. The equestrian court — full suits of armor on full-sized horses, arranged as if mid-charge — is genuinely cinematic. These are not props. They were made to be worn into battles, jousts, and tournaments by specific people whose names are recorded.
The craftsmanship is extraordinary: etched, gilded, fitted to a body. The Met has armor from 15th-century Europe, feudal Japan, Ottoman Turkey, and colonial India. It's worth spending an hour here even if you came for the paintings.
The American Wing
The American Wing's courtyard — a glass-roofed atrium with sculpture, architectural fragments from demolished New York buildings, and a Tiffany loggia from a Chicago bank — is one of the museum's best-kept secrets as a lunch spot. It's quieter than the main cafeteria and has seating among genuine 19th-century American decorative arts.
The painting galleries above hold the Hudson River School — Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, Albert Bierstadt — landscapes of an America that was being mythologized even as it was being settled. Emanuel Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware is here, enormous and theatrical, painted in Germany by a German-American artist who wanted to inspire European revolutionaries with a scene from American history.
The Rooftop Garden
From May through October, the roof of the Met opens for a rotating sculpture installation with a view of Central Park that doesn't exist anywhere else in the city. The bar is not cheap. The view is worth it. Go late afternoon when the light is low over the park.
Practical notes
New York State residents and students pay what they wish — the "suggested" $30 is not mandatory. For everyone else, the full admission covers same-day entry to the Cloisters (the Met's medieval branch in Washington Heights), which most people don't know and almost no one takes advantage of.
Friday and Saturday evenings the museum stays open until 9 pm. After 6 pm on those nights it's noticeably calmer. The coat check near the main entrance is free. The main cafeteria is expensive and crowded; the American Wing courtyard and the smaller café near the Egyptian Wing are better options.