Begin at the intersection of East 8th Street, 4th Avenue, and Astor Place, where you'll see two traffic islands. One of these contains an ornate cast-iron kiosk, a replica of a beaux arts subway entrance, which provides access to the uptown Astor Place Subway Station. On the other traffic island stands the Alamo, a huge black cube.

Go straight east from the Alamo to St. Marks Place, the name given to 8th Street in the East Village. Second Avenue, which St. Marks crosses after one block, was called the Yiddish Rialto in the early part of the 20th century: at that time eight theaters between Houston and 14th streets presented Yiddish-language productions of musicals, revues, and heart-wrenching melodramas.

Two survivors from that period are the Orpheum (126 2nd Ave., at 8th St.) and the neo-Moorish Yiddish Arts Theatre, now the multi screen Village East Cinemas (189 2nd Ave., at 12th St.), which has preserved the original ornate ceiling. In front of the Second Avenue Deli (156 2nd Ave., at 10th St.), Hollywood-style squares have been embedded in the sidewalk to commemorate Yiddish stage luminaries.

Second Avenue is also home to a neighborhood landmark, St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery Church on the corner of East 10th Street. From here you can take a short detour to admire the facades of handsome redbrick row houses on quiet Stuyvesant Street, which stretches southwest to East 9th Street. If you continue two blocks north up 2nd Avenue from the church, you'll reach the Ukrainian Museum.

Next, return south to 135 2nd Avenue, between East 9th Street and St. Marks Place, to see the Ottendorfer Branch of the New York Public Library.

Continue east on either East 9th Street or St. Marks Place, toward Alphabet City. East 9th Street is full of small, friendly shops selling designer and vintage clothing, housewares, toys, music, and much more, while St. Marks Place between 1st Avenue and Avenue A is lined with inexpensive cafés catering to a late-night younger crowd.

At the northeast corner of 1st Avenue and East 9th Street stands P.S. 122, a former public school building transformed into a complex of spaces for avant-garde entertainment. At Avenue A is Tompkins Square Park, a fairly peaceful spot during the day.

If you walk south on Avenue A past East Houston Street, you'll run into the historical Lower East Side, now a gentrified enclave. Students and artists occupy tenements once belonging to entire families on such streets as Rivington and Clinton. Popular bars and clubs, especially along Ludlow Street, draw crowds well beyond these new locals on the weekends.

On Orchard Street, a longtime shopping strip, bargains can still be haggled for on fabrics, leather goods, clothes, and more, but the face of the Orchard Street Garment District has been modernized by a younger generation of pricey fashion-furious boutiques such as Shop (105 Stanton St.) and Vlada (101 Stanton St.). Here and there you'll see reminders of the old days - the fading signs for defunct Jewish businesses, as well as for a few holdouts, such as Gertel's Bakery (53 Hester St.) and The Pickle Guys (49 Essex St.).

Historic establishments such as Katz's Delicatessen (205 E. Houston St., at Ludlow St.), Ratner's Restaurant (138 Delancey St.), and the more upscale Russ & Daughters (179 E. Houston St., between Orchard and Allen Sts.) anchor the area firmly in its immigrant past. Two important synagogues, markers of time and tradition, are persevering renovations: the city's oldest synagogue, dating to 1850, the Shul of New York (172 Norfolk St., between Stanton and E. Houston Sts.), now the Angel Orensanz Center for the Arts, and, farther south, the Eldridge Street Synagogue, once the largest Jewish house of worship. On Orchard Street, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum brings a bygone era to life.

Head back up into the East Village, to the corner of 1st Avenue and East 6th Street. The entire south side of East 6th Street between 1st and 2nd avenues belongs to a dozen or more Indian restaurants serving inexpensive subcontinental fare (New Yorkers joke that they all share a single kitchen).
Continuing west on East 6th Street, past 2nd Avenue, turn right onto Taras Shevchenko Place (named for the Ukrainian Shakespeare) to East 7th Street and McSorley's Old Ale House. Just west of McSorley's is Surma, the Ukrainian Shop, and across the street is the copper-domed St. George's Ukrainian Catholic Church, whose interior is lightened by impressive stained-glass windows.

Across 3rd Avenue, the massive brownstone Cooper Union Foundation Building houses a tuition-free school for artists, architects, and engineers and overlooks Cooper Square, an inhospitable space snubbed even by students. To the south are the offices of the Village Voice newspaper (36 Cooper Sq.), and around the corner on East 4th Street, the Merchant's House Museum.

One block west of Cooper Square is Lafayette Street. The long block between East 4th Street and Astor Place contains on its east side a grand Italian Renaissance-style structure housing the Joseph Papp Public Theater. Across the street note the imposing marble Corinthian columns fronting Colonnade Row, a stretch of four crumbling 19th-century Greek revival houses. Walk north to Astor Place and turn left to reach Broadway.
Three blocks north lies Grace Church, which has a striking marble spire. If you continue along the same side of the street as the church, you'll pass a few of the many antiques stores in the area. You can end your walk at the popular Strand Book Store, the largest secondhand bookstore in the city and an absolutely necessary stop for anyone who loves to read. Clothing shops, shoe shops, and chain stores line Broadway south of Astor Place. Above street level the old warehouses here have mostly been converted into residential lofts.
 

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