Quick answer
Fort Tryon Park is the 67-acre public park atop a high bluff in Upper Manhattan, designed by the Olmsted Brothers and given to the city by John D. Rockefeller Jr. It holds the Met Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's branch of medieval art, with wide views over the Hudson River.
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The gift on the bluff
Fort Tryon Park climbs out of the rock high above the Hudson on a crag of Manhattan schist, its 67 acres laid out along the top of a ridge in Upper Manhattan. Here in 1776 the Battle of Fort Washington was fought, the last stand of the American Revolution in New York City. And here, from 1917 on, John D. Rockefeller Jr. quietly bought up the old country estates to build one great public garden; he gave the land to the city in 1931, and the Olmsted Brothers finished the rolling, wood-fringed park in 1935. From the northern edge the view over the river and the Palisades is among the widest in the five boroughs.
A medieval museum in the trees
Rising from the park's center is the Met Cloisters, a stone-and-tile building assembled from the dismantled cloisters, doorways, and chapels of medieval French monasteries. It opened in 1938 to house the collection of medieval sculpture, stained glass, and painting that Rockefeller bought from collector George Gray Barnard and gave to the city's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Inside, four courtyards ring the building with plants and fountains, and the galleries hold almost a millennium of European art set in rooms that reconstruct the abbeys where it was made. It is a museum that feels less like a building than a transported corner of the Middle Ages.
What to do up here
Leave the museum and take the paths that thread the ridge above the river, where the schist, the woods, and the gardens close in and the city noise drops away. Walk out to the northern overlook when the light lines the Hudson and the Palisades glow, then wander the planted terraces and lawns Rockefeller's gardeners shaped for the public. Come on a clear late afternoon when the air is bright and give the slow paths an hour. Stand at the top of the cliff above the Henry Hudson Parkway and watch the river bend below — then turn and go back through the gates into the medieval courtyard before you leave.