Quick answer
The Met, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is the most-visited museum in the United States, on Fifth Avenue beside Central Park. Founded in 1870, it holds 1.5 million works across seventeen departments, from ancient Egypt — including the Temple of Dendur — to European masters and contemporary art.
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An Idea That Became the Biggest Museum in America
The museum was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizens — philanthropists, artists, and businessmen — who wanted a national institution to bring art to the public. The first section of the Fifth Avenue building went up in 1880, and the museum kept growing. Today the main building covers about two million square feet, making it the largest art museum in the Americas and the fourth-largest museum in the world by floor area. Inside are roughly 1.5 million works in seventeen departments, and in fiscal 2025 it drew 5.7 million visitors — more than any other museum in the United States.
The Temple That Moved
The strangest thing about the Met is that among its galleries sits a complete ancient temple. The Temple of Dendur was built in Egypt around 10 BCE at the order of Emperor Augustus, and it stood on the banks of the Nile for two thousand years. In the 1960s the Aswan High Dam threatened to flood it, so in 1963 UNESCO's rescue campaign had it dismantled stone by stone. Egypt gave the temple to the United States in 1965, President Johnson awarded it to the museum in 1967, and it has sat in a glass hall on Fifth Avenue ever since, the water of the Nile replaced by a reflecting pool.
How to See It
The museum is too big to see in a day, and the honest way to visit is to admit that. Walk in through the Great Hall on Fifth Avenue, then choose a single wing and give it an hour: ancient Egypt around the Temple of Dendur, the European paintings, the American wing, or the arms and armor. Ride the A train uptown to the Met Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park, where about five thousand medieval works — including the Unicorn Tapestries — sit inside galleries built from pieces of French monasteries.