The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City

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Visiting the Met. Museum Mile Festival

New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, known informally as the Met, is one of the world's preeminent museums. The Met anchors Museum Mile, a stretch of Fifth Avenue on Manhattan's Upper East Side that is home to eight museums. Of these, the Met is the biggest, followed by the Guggenheim. All reside within 22 blocks of one another. Today, the city celebrates these curatorial treasures with the Museum Mile Festival, as museums extend their hours and offer free admission to all visitors. Billed as a mile-long celebration of art and culture, the festival also includes outdoor performances along Fifth Avenue.

The Met was founded in 1870 and backs up to the eastern perimeter of Central Park. Its encyclopedic collection includes art from every part of the world, from classical antiquities to modern art, musical instruments, weaponry, and clothing. The vast museum even displays an Egyptian temple, the Temple of Dendur, which Egypt dismantled and gave to the US in 1965—President Lyndon Johnson awarded it to the Met two years later. The Met is also famous for hosting the Costume Institute Gala, better known as the Met Gala, on the first Monday of May. The gala is organized by Vogue magazine and draws celebrities from many fields.

But you don't have to be an A-lister to enjoy Museum Mile today. If your jam is the Met, El Museo del Barrio, the Jewish Museum, or the Cooper Hewitt, you don't want to miss this massive block party.