The defining characteristic of Manhattan's Upper East Side , a two-square-mile grid scored with the great avenues of Madison, Park and Lexington , is wealth. While other neighborhoods are affected by incursions of immigrant groups, artistic trends, and the like, this remains primarily an enclave of the well-off, with tony shops, clean and relatively safe streets, well-preserved buildings and landmarks. It also has some of the city's finest museums , all in a compact strip running on or near Fifth Avenue, known as Museum Mile: the Frick Collection and the Guggenheim Museum are the best (and best known), but the Whitney Museum of American Art , the Jewish Museum and the Museum of the City of New York each command attention.

Explore Upper East Side
Lexington Avenue and East (Upper East side),  Madison Avenue (Upper East side), Museum Mile, Park Avenue (Upper East side)

Lexington Avenue and East (Upper East side)Lexington Avenue is Madison without the class; as the west became richer, property developers rushed to slick up real estate in the east. Much of the East 60s and 70s now house young, unattached and upwardly mobile professionals - as the number of "happening" singles bars on Second and Third avenues will attest.

At 421 E 61st St, between York and First avenues, the Mount Vernon Hotel Museum and Garden (Sept-July daily 11am-4pm, Sun 1-5pm; $4, students and senior citizens $3, under 12 free; tel 212/838-6878) is a Federal-period structure restored by the Colonial Dames of America. The furnishings, knickknacks and the serene little park out back are more engaging than the house itself, but there's an odd sort of pull if you're lucky enough to be guided around by a chattily urbane Colonial Dame.

Much further north Gracie Mansion ($4, $3 for seniors; tel 212/570-4751), one block east of York at East End Avenue and 88th Street, was built in 1799 as a country manor house. It is one of the best-preserved colonial buildings in the city, and has been the official residence of the mayor of New York City since 1942, though "mansion" is a bit overblown for what is really a rather cramped clapboard cottage. Gracie is open for tours April through November, usually on Wednesday, though you need to book far enough in advance to receive a mailed confirmation.

Madison Avenue (Upper East side)Immediately east of Fifth Avenue lies Madison Avenue , a strip that was entirely residential until the 1920s. Today it is mainly an elegant shopping street, lined with top-notch designer clothes stores, some of whose doors are kept locked. The only key sight along its Upper East Side stretch is the Whitney Museum.

Explore Madison Avenue (Upper East side)

Whitney Museum of American Art

945 Madison Ave (at 75th St). Tues-Thurs & Sat-Sun 11am-6pm, Fri 1-9pm; $10, seniors and students $8; Fri 6-9pm pay what you wish; tel 212/570-3600, www.whitney.org. Excellent free gallery talks Wed-Sun, call for times. #6 to 77th St-Lexington Ave.

Located in a heavy arsenal-like building, the Whitney is a great forum for one of the pre-eminent collections of twentieth-century American art.

Currently, the museum owns over 12,000 modern paintings, sculptures, photographs and films, the best overview of which is contained in the Highlights of the Permanent Collection on the second and fifth floors. The collection is particularly strong on Hopper and several of his best paintings are here: Early Sun Morning is typical, a bleak urban landscape, uneasily tense in its lighting and rejection of topical detail. Other major bequests include a significant number of works by Avery, Demuth and O'Keefe . The Abstract Expressionists are featured strongly, with great works by Pollock and de Kooning . In a different direction there's work by Warhol, Johns (the celebrated Three Flags ) and some of Oldenburg 's Soft Sculptures .

Every other year there is an exhibition - the Whitney Biennial - designed to give a provocative overview of what's happening in contemporary American art. It is often panned by critics (sometimes for good reason) but always packed with visitors. Catch it if you can between March and June in even-numbered years.

Museum Mile
Fifth Avenue has been the haughty patrician face of Manhattan since the opening of Central Park in 1876 lured the Carnegies, Astors, Vanderbilts, Whitneys and other capitalists north from lower Fifth Avenue and Gramercy Park to build their fashionable Neoclassical residences along the park's eastern edge. A great deal of what you see, though, is third- or fourth-generation building: through the latter part of the nineteenth century, fanciful mansions were built at vast expense, to last only ten or fifteen years before being demolished for even wilder extravagances or, more commonly, grand apartment blocks. Rocketing land values made the chance of selling at vast profit irresistible.

Explore Museum Mile 
Frick Collection, Grand Army Plaza,  Guggenheim Museum, Jewish Museum,  Museo del Barrio, Museum of the City of New York

Frick Collection

1 E 70th St. Tues-Sat 10am-6pm, Sun 1-6pm, closed Mon; $10, students $5, under 10 are not admitted; tel 212/288-0700, www.frickcollection.org. Admission includes the use of ArtPhone, a dial-up audio guide to the rooms and exhibition pieces. A 22min audiovisual presentation is given every hour on the half-hour. #6 to 68th St-Lexington Ave.

Housed in the former mansion of Henry Clay Frick, the immensely enjoyable Frick Collection comprises the art treasures hoarded by this most ruthless and hated of New York's robber barons. However, the legacy of his ill-gotten gains is a superb collection of works, and as good a glimpse of the sumptuous life enjoyed by New York's early industrialists as you'll find.

Opened in the mid-1930s, the museum has been largely kept as it looked when the Fricks lived there. Much of the furniture is heavy eighteenth-century French, but the nice thing about the place - and many people rank the Frick as their favorite New York gallery because of this - is that it strives hard to be as unlike a museum as possible.

There's a magnificent array of works here by Rembrandt (including a set of piercing Self-Portraits ), Goya and Whistler , as well as an early (and suggestive) Vermeer , Officer and Laughing Girl , and one of van Eyck 's last works, a Virgin and Child .

The West Gallery is the Frick's major draw, holding some of its finest paintings in a truly magnificent setting - a long elegant room with a concave glass ceiling and ornately carved wood trim. Two Turners , views of Cologne and Dieppe, hang opposite each other, each a blaze of orange and creamy tones; Van Dyck pitches in with a couple of uncharacteristically informal portraits of Frans Snyders and his wife - two paintings reunited only when Frick purchased them; and there are several portraits by Frans Hals , and Vincenzo Anastagi by El Greco , a stunning portrait of a Spanish soldier resplendent in green velvet and armor.

Grand Army Plaza
1 E 70th St. Tues-Sat 10am-6pm, Sun 1-6pm, closed Mon; $10, students $5, under 10 are not admitted; tel 212/288-0700, www.frickcollection.org. Admission includes the use of ArtPhone, a dial-up audio guide to the rooms and exhibition pieces. A 22min audiovisual presentation is given every hour on the half-hour. #6 to 68th St-Lexington Ave.

Housed in the former mansion of Henry Clay Frick, the immensely enjoyable Frick Collection comprises the art treasures hoarded by this most ruthless and hated of New York's robber barons. However, the legacy of his ill-gotten gains is a superb collection of works, and as good a glimpse of the sumptuous life enjoyed by New York's early industrialists as you'll find.

Opened in the mid-1930s, the museum has been largely kept as it looked when the Fricks lived there. Much of the furniture is heavy eighteenth-century French, but the nice thing about the place - and many people rank the Frick as their favorite New York gallery because of this - is that it strives hard to be as unlike a museum as possible.

There's a magnificent array of works here by Rembrandt (including a set of piercing Self-Portraits ), Goya and Whistler , as well as an early (and suggestive) Vermeer , Officer and Laughing Girl , and one of van Eyck 's last works, a Virgin and Child .

The West Gallery is the Frick's major draw, holding some of its finest paintings in a truly magnificent setting - a long elegant room with a concave glass ceiling and ornately carved wood trim. Two Turners , views of Cologne and Dieppe, hang opposite each other, each a blaze of orange and creamy tones; Van Dyck pitches in with a couple of uncharacteristically informal portraits of Frans Snyders and his wife - two paintings reunited only when Frick purchased them; and there are several portraits by Frans Hals , and Vincenzo Anastagi by El Greco , a stunning portrait of a Spanish soldier resplendent in green velvet and armor.

Guggenheim Museum

1071 5th Ave (at 88th St). Sun-Wed 9am-6pm, Fri & Sat 9am-8pm; $12, seniors, students $7, under 12 free, Fri 6-8pm pay what you wish; tel 212/423-3500, www.guggenheim.org. #4, #5 or #6 to 86th St-Lexington Ave.

Whatever you think of the Guggenheim Museum 's collection of paintings, it's the upturned beehive building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright that steals the show, looking wildly out of place amidst the solemn facades of Fifth Avenue. Solomon R. Guggenheim was one of America's richest men and he collected modern paintings with fervor, buying wholesale the paintings of Kandinsky , adding works by Chagall, Klee, Léger and others, and exhibiting them to a bemused American public in the 1920s. Subsequent donations include masterworks by Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin, Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh and Picasso , among others, greatly enhancing the museum's Impressionist and Post-Impressionist holdings. The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation recently gave 196 photographs that bridge the artist's entire career, which are now housed in a brand new Mapplethorpe gallery on the fourth floor.

Since the circular galleries increase upward at a not-so-gentle slope, it may be preferable to start at the top of the museum and work your way down; most of the temporary exhibits are planned that way

Jewish Museum

1109 5th Ave (92nd St). Sun 10am-5.45pm, Mon-Thurs 11am-5.45pm, Tues until 9pm, Fri 11am-3pm; $8, students $5.50, under 12 free, free Tues 5-9pm; tel 212/423-3200, www.jewishmuseum.org. #4, #5 or #6 to 96th St-Lexington Ave.

This is the largest museum of Judaica outside Israel. Its centerpiece is a permanent exhibition on the Jewish experience that seeks to answer the question, "What constitutes the essence of Jewish identity?" with a presentation of the basic ideas, values and culture developed over four thousand years. A collection of Hanukkah lamps is one of the highlights. More vibrant, however, are the changing displays of works by major international artists, and theme exhibitions (for example, a recent major show on Freud containing nearly 200 artifacts from his Vienna offices). The Jewish Museum sponsors a varied media program, including a film festival.

Museo del Barrio

1230 5th Ave (at 104th St). Wed-Sun 11am-5pm; suggested donation $5, students $3; tel 212/831-7272, www.elmuseo.org. #6 to 103rd St-Lexington Ave.

Literally translated as "the neighborhood museum," the Museo was founded in 1969 by a group of Puerto Rican parents, educators and artists from Spanish Harlem who wanted to teach their children about their roots. Now, although the emphasis remains largely Puerto Rican, the museum embraces the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean, with five major loan exhibits of painting, photographs and crafts each year, by both traditional and emerging artists.

Museum of the City of New York

1220 5th Ave (103rd St). Wed-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun noon-5pm, Tues 10am-2pm for pre-registered tour groups only; suggested donation $7, students $4, families $12; tel 212/534-1672, www.mcny.org. #6 to 103rd St-Lexington Ave.

Spaciously housed in a neo-Georgian mansion, the permanent collection of this museum provides a history of the city from Dutch times to the present. Prints, photographs, costumes and furniture are displayed on four floors, and a film about the city's history runs continuously. One of its permanent exhibits is New York Toy Stories , an engaging trip from the late 1800s to today that consists of all manner of motion toys, board games, sports equipment, and doll houses. This is a comprehensive, worthwhile and fascinating look at the evolution of a city. (The museum is scheduled to relocate downtown to the Tweed Courthouse in the spring of 2003.)

Park Avenue (Upper East side)
A block east of Madison, Park Avenue is stolidly comfortable and often elegant. In the low 90s, the large black shapes of the Louise Nevelson sculptures stand out on the traffic islands. Just above 96th Street the neighborhood abruptly transforms into Spanish Harlem at the point where the subway line emerges from underground. One of the best features of this boulevard is the sweeping view south, as Park Avenue coasts down to the New York Central and Met Life (originally Pan Am) buildings.

Dominating a square block between 66th and 67th streets is the Seventh Regiment Armory , built in the 1870s with pseudo-medieval crenellations and the only surviving building from the era before the New York Central's railroad tracks were roofed over and Park Avenue became an upscale residential neighborhood. There are two surviving interiors inside the Veterans' Room and the Library; call ahead for a tour (tel 212/744-8180). Frequent art and antique shows provide an opportunity to gawk at the enormous drill hall inside.

Explore Park Avenue (Upper East side)

Asia Society Museum

725 Park Ave (at 70th St). Tues-Sat 11am-6pm, Thurs until 8pm, Sun noon-5pm; $4, students and seniors $2; free Thurs 6-8pm; tel 212/517-ASIA, www.asiasociety.org. #6 to 68th St-Lexington Ave.

A prominent educational resource on Asia founded by John D. Rockefeller 3rd, the Asia Society offers an exhibition space dedicated to both traditional and contemporary art from all over Asia; in addition to the usually worthwhile temporary exhibits, intriguing performances, political roundtables, lectures, films and free events are frequently held.