The Upper West Side has always had a more unbuttoned vibe than its counterpart across the park. It is now one of the city's most desirable addresses, and tends to attract what might be called New York's cultural elite and new-money types - musicians, writers, journalists, curators and the like - though there is also a small but visible homeless presence.

The Upper West Side is bordered by Central Park to the east, the Hudson River to the west, Columbus Circle at 59th Street to the south, and 110th Street (the northernmost point of Central Park) to the north. The main artery is Broadway and, generally speaking, the further you stray east or west the wealthier things become, until you reach the pinnacle of prosperity, the historic apartment buildings of Central Park West and Riverside Drive . Lincoln Center , New York's most prestigious palace of performing arts, lies in the region's southern streets, and along with the superlative American Museum of Natural History , forms the Upper West Side's greatest draw. North of 110th Street finds you in Morningside Heights , home to the Cathedral Church of St John the Divine and Columbia University .

Explore Upper West Side
Broadway (Upper W. side), Central Park West, Columbus Circle and around, Lincoln Center,  Morningside Heights, Riverside Park and Riverside Drive

Broadway (Upper W. side)
The Upper West Side has seen a lot of changes in the last few years and Broadway , the neighborhood's main drag, reflects them. Gentrification is creeping northward, sometimes for the better, often not. The turnover of establishments here is often astounding, but one stalwart is Zabar's , at 2254 Broadway, between 80th and 81st streets. The Upper West Side's principal gourmet shop, this area landmark offers more or less anything connected with food.

A few blocks north at 212 W 83rd St, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, the Children's Museum of Manhattan (Tues-Sun 10am-5pm; children and adults $5, under 1 free; tel 212/721-1234, www.cmom.org ) offers interactive exhibits that stimulate learning, in a fun, relaxed environment for kids (and babies). The Dr. Seuss exhibit and the storytelling room (filled with books kids can choose from) are particular winners.

Central Park West
On Central Park West at 72nd Street, the Dakota Building , with its turrets, gables and other odd details, was built to persuade wealthy New Yorkers that life in an apartment could be just as luxurious as in a private house. Over the years there have been few residents here not publicly known in some way: big-time tenants included Lauren Bacall and Leonard Bernstein, and in the 1960s the building was used as the setting for Roman Polanski's film Rosemary's Baby . But the most famous recent resident of the Dakota was John Lennon , remembered in a memorial just across the street in Central Park.

The Death of John Lennon

Most people know the Dakota Building as the former home of John Lennon - and present home of his wife Yoko Ono, who owns a number of the apartments. It was outside the Dakota, on the night of December 8, 1980, that Lennon was murdered by Mark David Chapman, who had been hanging around outside the building all day to get Lennon's autograph.

Explore Central Park West

American Museum of Natural History

Central Park W at 79th St. Sun-Thurs 10am-5.45pm, Fri & Sat 10am-8.45pm; suggested donation (including the Rose Center) $10, students $7.50, children $6; IMAX films, the Hayden Planetarium and certain special exhibits cost extra; tel 212/769-5100, www.amnh.org. #B or #C to 81st St-Central Park West.

An enormous complex of buildings full of fossils, gems, skeletons and other natural specimens, along with a wealth of man-made artifacts from indigenous cultures worldwide, the American Museum of Natural History is one of the best and largest museums of its kind, with 32 million items on display. There's a fantastic amount to see, but be selective; depending on your interests, anything from a highly discriminating couple of hours to half a day should be ample.

On the second (entry-level) floor are the Hall of Asian People and Hall of African People , each filled with fascinating art and artifacts. Another highlight of this floor is the lower half of the Hall of African Mammals - don't miss (though how can you?) the life-size family of elephants in the center of the room.

The fourth floor is almost entirely taken up with the wildly popular Dinosaur Exhibit ; covering five spacious, well-lit, and well-designed halls, it is the largest collection in the world, with more than 120 specimens on display.

On the first floor, the Hall of Gems and Minerals includes some strikingly beautiful crystals - not least the Star of India , the largest blue sapphire ever found. More captivating, however, is the new Hall of Biodiversity , whose centerpiece is a living re-creation of a Central African Republic rainforest that you can walk through, to the sounds of birdcalls.

Across from the Hall of Biodiversity lies the first installation of the Rose Center for Earth and Space - the spanking new Hall of Planet Earth , containing the Dynamic Earth Globe , where visitors seated below the globe are able to watch the earth via satellite go through its full rotation.

New York Historical Society

2 W 77th St at Central Park W; Tues-Sun 11am-5pm, Summer Tues-Fri only; suggested donation $5, students and seniors $3, children free; tel 212/873-3400, www.nyhistory.org. #B or #C to 81st St-Central Park West.

The often overlooked New-York Historical Society is more a museum of American than New York history, and its temporary exhibitions are more daring than you'd expect, mixing high and low culture with intelligence and flair. On the second floor, James Audubon , the Harlem artist and naturalist who specialized in lovingly detailed watercolors of birds, is the focus of one room (the collection holds all 432 original watercolors of Audubon's Birds of America ); other galleries hold a broad sweep of nineteenth-century American painting. 

Columbus Circle and around

#A, #B, #C, #D, #1, or # 2 to 59th Street.

Columbus Circle , at the intersection of Broadway, Central Park West and 59th Street, is a pedestrian's worst nightmare but a good place to start investigating the Upper West Side nonetheless.

You'll immediately spy the glittering Trump International Hotel , a new luxury hotel and residential condo, that was touted as "The World's Most Prestigious Address" - just the most recent example of Donald Trump's extraordinary hubris.

For relief, go west a few blocks and contemplate the Church of St Paul the Apostle , 9th Avenue between 59th and 60th streets, a beautiful Old Gothic structure housing Byzantine basilica features.

At 2 Lincoln Square (at Broadway and 66th St) the Museum of American Folk Art (Tues-Sun 11.30am-7.30pm; suggested admission $3; tel 212/595-9533, www.folkartmuseum.org ) has occasionally interesting (if a little recondite) exhibitions of multicultural folk art from all over the US, with a permanent collection that includes over 3500 works from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries.

Lincoln Center

#1 to 66th St-Broadway.

Broadway continues north from Columbus Circle to the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts , an imposing group of buildings arranged around a large plaza and fountain, on the west side between 63rd and 66th streets. Built in the mid-1960s on a site that formerly held some of the city's poorest slums, Lincoln Center is home to the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic, as well as a host of other smaller companies.

Lincoln Center is home to a variety of free entertainment, ranging from the Autumn Crafts Fair in early September, and folk and jazz bands at lunchtime throughout the summer. Call 212/875-5000 for specifics .

Explore Lincoln Center

Lincoln Center’s smaller venues, Metropolitan Opera House, New York State Theater and Avery Fisher Hall

Lincoln Center’s smaller venues

To the south of the Met lies Damrosch Park, a large space with rows of chairs facing the Guggenheim Bandshell , where you can catch free summer lunchtime concerts and various performances. To the north, you will find a lovely, smaller plaza facing the Vivian Beaumont Theater . Across 66th Street is Alice Tully Hall , a recital hall that houses the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the Walter E. Reade Theater , which features foreign films and retrospectives and, together with the Avery Fisher and Alice Tully halls, hosts the annual New York Film Festival in September. The famed Juilliard School of Music is in an adjacent building.

Metropolitan Opera House
Known as "the Met," the Metropolitan Opera House (tel 212/362-6000) is the focal point of the Lincoln Center plaza, with enormous crystal chandeliers and red-carpeted staircases designed for grand entrances in gliding evening wear. Behind two of the high-arched windows hang murals by Marc Chagall and the opera house's elegant interior says opulence, pure and simple. Backstage tours of the Met cost $9 ($4 for students) and are given daily October through June, at 3.45pm and at 10am on Saturday.

New York State Theater and Avery Fisher Hall
The spare and elegant New York State Theater (tel 212/870-5570), on the south side of the Lincoln Center plaza, is home to the New York City Ballet, the New York City Opera and the famed annual December performances of The Nutcracker Suite . The ballet season runs from late November through February, and from early April through June; the opera season starts in July and runs through mid-November.

Avery Fisher Hall (tel 212/875-5030), on the north side of the plaza, does not possess the magnificence of the auditorium across the way, and the most exciting thing about the hall is its foyer, dominated by a huge hanging sculpture. The New York Philharmonic performs here from September through May; the less expensive Mostly Mozart concerts take place here in July and August.  

Morningside Heights
Morningside Heights, just north of the Upper West Side, is the last gasp of Manhattan's wealth before Harlem. Marked at the edge by the monolithic Cathedral of St John the Divine , the area is filled largely with students and professors from Columbia University , as well as middle-class families and a mix of whites, blacks, Latinos and Asians.

Explore Morningside Heights

Cathedral Church of St John, Columbia University, Riverside Church and Grant’s Tomb

Cathedral Church of St John

#1 to 110th Street-Broadway.

The Cathedral Church of St John the Divine , Amsterdam Avenue at 112th Street, rises out of the urban landscape with a sure, solid kind of majesty - far from finished, but still one of New York's most impressive sights.

Work on the Episcopal church began in 1892 to the specifications of a Romanesque design that, with a change of architect in 1911, became French Gothic. Work progressed quickly for a while but stopped with the outbreak of war in 1939 and only resumed again in the mid-1980s. The church declared bankruptcy in 1994, fraught with funding difficulties and hard questioning by people who thought the money might be better spent on something of more obvious benefit to the local community, and has since launched a massive international fund-raising drive in the hope of resuming building work soon.

The cathedral appears complete at first glance (despite the ever-present scaffolding), but when you gaze up into its huge, uncompleted towers, you realize how much is left to do. Only two-thirds of the cathedral is finished, and completion isn't due until around 2050 - even assuming it goes on uninterrupted. Still, if finished, St John the Divine will be the largest cathedral structure in the world, its floor space - at 600 feet long and at the transepts 320 feet wide - big enough to swallow both the cathedrals of Notre Dame and Chartres whole.

Walking the length of the nave , you can see the melding of the Romanesque and Gothic styles. This blending is particularly apparent in the choir, which rises from a heavy arcade of Romanesque columns to a high, light-Gothic vaulting, the temporary dome of the crossing to someday be replaced by a tall, delicate Gothic spire.

In December 2001, a fire broke out in the cathedral's gift shop. The damage was confined to the shop as well as several tapestries along the north wall - relatively little harm considering the events of the year

Columbia University 

#1 to 110th Street-Broadway.

The Cathedral Church of St John the Divine , Amsterdam Avenue at 112th Street, rises out of the urban landscape with a sure, solid kind of majesty - far from finished, but still one of New York's most impressive sights.

Work on the Episcopal church began in 1892 to the specifications of a Romanesque design that, with a change of architect in 1911, became French Gothic. Work progressed quickly for a while but stopped with the outbreak of war in 1939 and only resumed again in the mid-1980s. The church declared bankruptcy in 1994, fraught with funding difficulties and hard questioning by people who thought the money might be better spent on something of more obvious benefit to the local community, and has since launched a massive international fund-raising drive in the hope of resuming building work soon.

The cathedral appears complete at first glance (despite the ever-present scaffolding), but when you gaze up into its huge, uncompleted towers, you realize how much is left to do. Only two-thirds of the cathedral is finished, and completion isn't due until around 2050 - even assuming it goes on uninterrupted. Still, if finished, St John the Divine will be the largest cathedral structure in the world, its floor space - at 600 feet long and at the transepts 320 feet wide - big enough to swallow both the cathedrals of Notre Dame and Chartres whole.

Walking the length of the nave , you can see the melding of the Romanesque and Gothic styles. This blending is particularly apparent in the choir, which rises from a heavy arcade of Romanesque columns to a high, light-Gothic vaulting, the temporary dome of the crossing to someday be replaced by a tall, delicate Gothic spire.

In December 2001, a fire broke out in the cathedral's gift shop. The damage was confined to the shop as well as several tapestries along the north wall - relatively little harm considering the events of the year

Riverside Church and Grant’s Tomb
Riverside Church , on Riverside Drive between 120th and 121st streets (daily 9am-4.30pm, Sun service 10.45am), has a graceful French Gothic Revival tower. Take the elevator to the 20th floor and ascend the steps around the carillon (the largest in the world, with 74 bells) for some classic spreads of Manhattan's skyline, New Jersey and the hills beyond.

Up the block from the church at 122nd Street is Grant's Tomb (daily 9am-5pm; free), a Greek-style memorial and the nation's largest mausoleum in which conquering Civil War hero and blundering President Grant really is interred with his wife, in two black-marble Napoleonic sarcophogi.