New York City
Discover New York City
A concise introduction to New York City, its geography, history and culture.
Introduction
New York City is five boroughs and about 8.3 million people on a set of islands at the mouth of the Hudson, and it operates at a density no other American city approaches.
Most of what visitors come for sits on Manhattan, an island thirteen miles long and barely two across: the museums along Central Park, the theatre district, the financial district at the southern tip. But roughly three-quarters of the population lives in the other four boroughs, and that is where the city is most itself.
It is the most linguistically diverse city in the world — more than 200 languages, and close to 40% of residents born abroad — and that is not a statistic so much as the organising fact of its food, its neighbourhoods and its street life.
The subway runs 24 hours a day, which shapes everything about how the city is used. Nothing here closes early because everyone leaves.