A massive slab of a building on the eastern edge of Central Park between 80th and 84th Streets, the Met , as the museum's usually called, is the foremost museum in America and one of the great museums of the world. The Met's collection takes in over two million works of art. Any overview of the museum is out of the question: the Met demands many and specific visits or, at least, self-imposed limits.

Broadly, the museum breaks down into seven major collections : European Arts-Painting and Sculpture; Asian Art; American Painting and Decorative Arts; Egyptian Antiquities; Medieval Art; Ancient Greek and Roman Art; and the Art of Africa, the Pacific and the Americas.

Among the less famous Met collections are its Islamic Art (possibly the largest display anywhere in the world); European Decorative Arts; Greek and Roman Art; Arms and Armor Galleries (the largest and most important in the Western Hemisphere); a Musical Instrument Collection (containing the world's oldest piano); and the spectacular Costume Institute.

Despite the museum's size, initial orientation is not too difficult. There is just one main entrance, and once you've passed through it you find yourself in the Great Hall , a deftly lit Neoclassical cavern where you can consult plans, check tours and pick up info on the Met's excellent lecture listings.

European Art
The Met's European Art galleries are at their best in the Dutch painting section, with major works of Rembrandt (a superb Self-Portrait ), Hals , and especially Vermeer , whose Young Woman with a Water Jug and A Girl Asleep display the artist at his most complex and the Met at its most fortunate. Continue on, and as you loop back to the entrance to the painting galleries you'll pass through another smattering of works by Spanish, French and Italian painters, most notably Goya and Velázquez . The latter's piercing and somber Portrait of Juan de Pareja shouldn't be missed. A whole room is dedicated to the formidable works of El Greco . His extraordinary View of Toledo - all brooding intensity as the skies seem about to swallow up the ghost-like town - is perhaps the best of his works anywhere in the world.

The Italian Renaissance isn't spectacularly represented, but there's a worthy selection from the various Italian schools; these works consist largely of narrative panels or altarpieces, and gold paint is often used, either for the background or for the haloes of the religious figures. Highlights include an early Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints by Raphael , a late Botticelli (the crisply linear Three Miracles of Saint Zenobius ), Filippo Lippi 's Madonna and Child Enthroned with Two Angels , and Michele de Verona 's handsome Madonna and Child with the Infant John the Baptist , in which the characters are almost sculpturally rendered.

Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Painting
On its second floor the Met has a startling array of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. Chief works include Manet 's Young Lady in 1866 , Courbet 's Young Ladies from the Village and Degas ' Dancers Practicing at the Bar . There are three superb works by Monet - Rouen Cathedral, The Houses of Parliament (Effect of Fog) and The Doge's Palace Seen from San Giorgio Maggiore - which show the beginnings of his final phase of near-abstract Impressionism. Renoir is perhaps the best represented among the remaining Impressionists, though his most important work here dates from 1878, when he began to move away from the mainstream techniques he'd learned while working with Monet. Mme Charpentier and her Children is a likeable enough piece, one whose affectionate tone manages to sidestep the sentimentality of Renoir's later work.

Also here is Cézanne 's masterpiece The Card Players . All of this scratches little more than the surface of the galleries. Look out for major works by Van Gogh (including Irises, Woman of Arles and Sunflowers ), Rousseau, Bonnard, Pissarro and Seurat .

Modern Art
The Met's modern art collection, housed on the second-floor Lila Acheson Wallace Wing, is a fascinating and relatively compact group of paintings. Picasso's Portrait of Gertrude Stein and his blue-period The Blind Man's Meal are here, alongside works by Klee, Modigliani, Braque and Klimt . Other highlights include Hopper 's Views From Williamsburg Bridge and O'Keefe 's, sumptuous, erotic Black Iris , Pollock 's masterly Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) and Warhol 's Last Self-Portrait , which dates from 1986.

Asian Art
The second floor's Asian Art galleries gather an impressive and vast array of Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Southeast Asian sculpture, painting, ceramics and metalwork, as well as an indoor replica of a Chinese garden. Fourteen recently renovated and expanded galleries showcase Chinese painting, calligraphy, jade, lacquer and textiles, making this collection one of the largest in the world.

The highlight is the Chinese Garden Court , a serene, minimalist retreat enclosed by the galleries, and the adjacent Ming Room , a typical salon decorated in period style with wooden lattice doors. The naturally lit garden is representative of one found in Chinese homes - a pagoda, small waterfall and stocked goldfish pond landscaped by limestone rocks, trees and shrubs conjure up an inordinate sense of peace.