Why I Love the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Last week, I mentioned that I wanted to make this a regular thing - a sort of column about travel and my favorite places. The majority of those will be museums, and generally art museums at that, and I figured where better to start than one of my favorite museums in the world? And since this all came about with talk of New York City, it's only fitting to start with the Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art). In this post, I'm only talking about the main museum, not the Cloisters as well. I will cover them in a later post.

If you're easily overwhelmed, the Met is not a good place to go without a plan. It would take ages to see everything. It's the largest art museum in the US and in the top for size around the world, at around two million square feet. The facade actually doesn't do the intimidating size justice; it merely makes it look big. However, once you accept that one day is simply not enough time to see everything and select what you do want to see, it's a bit more manageable. This is easily a museum where you could arrive when it opened, leave when it closed, and still feel like you needed several more visits to explore in depth.