The area west of Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan takes Times Square as its center, an exploded version of the east side's more tight-lipped monuments to capitalism. Though in some ways it cannot compete with the richer avenues and enclaves to the east, the area north of the once "naughty, bawdy 42nd Street," with its Theater District and Restaurant Row , is well worth exploring. Most of Times Square's pornography and crime is gone, replaced in part by products of Disney imagination, modern high-rise office buildings and hotels that threaten to spoil the square's historic greasy appeal. The further west you head, the fewer tourist attractions you'll find, with the notable exception of a retired US aircraft carrier that encompasses the massive Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum .

Explore Midtown West

Carnegie Hall, Diamond Row, Hell’s Kitchen, Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, North of Times Square, Sixth Avenue (Midtown),  Times Square, Towards 57^th Street

Carnegie Hall 

#N, #R, #Q or #W to 57th Street.

At 154 W 57th St stands stately Carnegie Hall , one of the world's greatest concert venues, whose superb acoustics ensure full houses most of the year. Tchaikovsky conducted the program on opening night and Mahler, Rachmaninov, Toscanini, Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland all played here. If you attend a performance, catch one of the engaging tours (Oct-June Mon-Tues, Thurs-Fri 11.30am, 2pm & 3pm, $6, $5 students; tel 212/247-7800). Alternatively, you can sneak in through the stage door on 56th Street for a look - no one minds as long as there's not a rehearsal in progress.

A few doors down at no. 150 W 57th St, the Russian Tea Room reigns as one of those places to see and be seen at, ever popular with "in" names from the entertainment business, its revolving doors ushering in a well-heeled crowd.

Diamond Row
One of the best things about New York City is the small hidden pockets abruptly discovered when you least expect them. W 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues is a perfect example: Diamond Row is a strip of shops chock-full of gems and jewelry, largely managed by Hassidic Jews who seem only to exist in the confines of the street. Maybe they are what gives the street its workaday feel - Diamond Row seems more like the Garment District than Fifth Avenue, and the conversations you overhear on the street or in the nearby delicatessens are memorably Jewish.

Hell’s Kitchen
To the west of Times Square lies Hell's Kitchen , an area centered on the engaging slash of restaurants, bars and ethnic delis of Ninth Avenue . Extending down to the Garment District and up to the low 50s, this was once one of New York's most violent and lurid neighborhoods, made up of soap and glue factories, slaughterhouses and the like. Gangs roamed the streets, and though their rule ended in 1910 after a major police counteroffensive, the area remained a bit dangerous until fairly recently, when musicians and Broadway types began moving in.

Head to it from Eighth Avenue (which now houses the porn businesses expelled from the square) down 46th Street - the so-called Restaurant Row that is the area's preferred haunt for pre- and post-theater dining. Here you can begin to detect a more pastoral feel, which only increases on many of the side streets around Ninth and Tenth avenues.

Sixth Avenue (Midtown)
Sixth Avenue is properly named Avenue of the Americas, though no New Yorker ever calls it this: the only manifestation of the tag are lamppost flags of Central and South American countries. If nothing else, Sixth's distinction is its width, a result of the elevated railway that once ran along here, now replaced by the Sixth Avenue subway. In its day the Sixth Avenue "El" marked the border between respectability to the east and shadier areas to the west, and in a way it's still a dividing line separating the glamorous strips of Fifth, Madison and Park avenues from the brasher western districts. At 1133 Sixth Ave (at 43rd St) is the International Center of Photography (Tues-Thurs 10am- 5pm, Fri 10am-8pm, Sat & Sun 10am-6pm; $8, students $6, free Fri 5-8pm), whose glassy confines generally present interesting exhibits. Further up, in the AXA Financial Building at no. 1290, look out for Thomas Hart Benton's America Today murals, which dynamically and magnificently portray ordinary American life in the days before the Depression.

Times Square
Times Square occupies the streets between 42nd and 47th, where Seventh Avenue and Broadway collide. This is the center of the Theater District, where the pulsating neon suggests a heart for the city itself. Since the major cleanup launched by the city and by business interests like Disney, the ambience here has changed dramatically. Traditionally a melting pot of debauch, depravity and fun, the area became increasingly edgy, a place where out-of-towners supplied easy pickings for petty criminals, drug dealers and prostitutes. Most of the peep shows and sex shops have been pushed out, and Times Square is now a largely sanitized universe of consumption. The neon signs seem to multiply at the same rate as coffee bars, and Disney rules the roost on the stretch of 42nd between Seventh and Eighth avenues, home to the remaining palatial Broadway "houses" and movie palaces.