Unofficial visitor guide · New York
Official audio guide · English Yes · 1 language · Free
Wall labels at The Met are written in English, and the museum itself says some of its resources are limited to English while its audience is global. Here is what it offers and how to hear the labels in your own language.
Independent guide by the makers of Tales of Museums. Not affiliated with The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Checked on 14 October 2026 from the sources linked above. Museums change their guides and rules; confirm on the official Met website before you go.
Checked on 14 October 2026 from the sources linked above. Museums change their guides and rules; confirm on the official Met website before you go.
Swipe for the works and stories worth knowing before you go.
The Met opened on Fifth Avenue in 1880 in a Ruskinian Gothic building by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould. Additions begun in 1888 now enclose it completely, yet its west facade still shows indoors, in the Robert Lehman Wing. The famous Fifth Avenue front came much later, opening in December 1902.
Her right strap, shown slipping off the shoulder, caused an uproar at the 1884 Paris Salon, and Sargent repainted it afterwards. He also reworked the background: look along the edge for a strip of a very different earlier colour. Selling it to the Met in 1916 for 1,000 pounds, he asked that it not carry her name. Gallery 771.
metmuseum.org: Revealing Madame X · metmuseum.org: How Madame X Came to The Met
In 1920 the Met's excavator Herbert Winlock had debris cleared from a long-plundered tomb at Thebes just to draw an accurate floor plan, and his workmen found a hidden chamber of 24 near-perfect wooden models. Cairo and the Met split them. In the cattle stable, one ox is so fat it can no longer stand. Gallery 105.
metmuseum.org: Model Cattle Stable from the Tomb of Meketre · metmuseum.org: Model of a Granary with Scribes
The Met itself lists what Leutze got wrong: the boats are crossing in the wrong direction, the ice floes are impossibly big, and there were no horses or cannon on board. Even the frame is a copy, rebuilt from a Mathew Brady photograph of the original trophy-style frame. Gallery 760.
The blue hippo's nickname comes from a 1931 story in the British humour magazine Punch, in which a family consults a print of it as an oracle. According to the Met, three legs were broken so it could not harm the dead man. Only the front left leg is original; the others differ slightly in colour. Gallery 111.
The pet magpie on a string holds Goya's calling card in its beak, so the bird carries his signature. Three wide-eyed cats fix on it from the left, a cage of finches sits on the right, and the Met reads the cats as a quiet threat. The boy, son of the Count of Altamira, died aged eight, a few years later. Gallery 641.
Soon after reaching Rome, Velázquez showed this portrait of Pareja, the man of African descent he held enslaved. An early biographer says friends stood in wonder, unsure whether to address the painting or the man. Within months Velázquez signed papers freeing Pareja by 1654; he became a painter in Madrid. Gallery 625.
The oldest of just three surviving pianos by Bartolomeo Cristofori, whom the Met credits as the piano's inventor. He called it a harpsichord 'with soft and loud', because its hammers let the player change the volume by touch alone. No action as sensitive was devised for another 75 years. Gallery 684.
The temple's blocks crossed the Atlantic in crates on the freighter Concordia Star and reached the Met on 20 August 1968, waiting in an air structure on the old south parking lot. At the doorway, look for 19th-century travellers' graffiti, cleaned in 2017 of grime left by decades of visitors' hands. Gallery 131.
metmuseum.org: A Monumental Gift to The Met · metmuseum.org: Conserving the Temple
Tales of Museums reads the English label in front of you aloud in your language, for any work you can photograph. Bring mobile data and your own headphones.
Coming soon to the App Store for iPhone
Generally no: labels are in English. The Met has piloted an AI tool that shows a label in another language, but it is a trial, not a standard service. Google Arts & Culture
Yes, free on your own phone: the museum's digital guide covers The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters. metmuseum.org: plan your visit · metmuseum.org: The Met Cloisters
Yes. Free Museum Highlights tours, included with admission, run in several languages: in the week of 21 October 2026 the Free Tours listing had tours in French, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, Korean, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Arabic, between 11 am and 2 pm, starting from the Vélez Blanco Patio (Gallery 534). Places are first come, first served, and the schedule changes, so check the listing on the day. metmuseum.org: free tours
Yes, for personal use without flash in most galleries. Some works are marked no-photography. metmuseum.org
Adults pay $30, seniors $22, students $17, and children 12 and under are free. Only New York State residents and students from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut can pay what they wish (at least one cent), with proof of residency or student ID. Advance tickets are not required, and a ticket also gets you into The Met Cloisters the same day. metmuseum.org: plan your visit
The Met is open until 9 pm on Fridays and Saturdays, and 10 am to 5 pm on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. It is closed every Wednesday, as well as on Thanksgiving, 25 December, 1 January and the first Monday in May. metmuseum.org: plan your visit
Take the 4, 5 or 6 train to 86th Street and walk three blocks west to Fifth Avenue, about 10 minutes. Buses M1 to M4 run along Fifth and Madison Avenues and stop at 82nd or 83rd Street. metmuseum.org: plan your visit
Small backpacks are allowed if you wear them on your front or carry them by hand; large bags and luggage are not allowed in the building, not even at coat check. Strollers and front-facing baby carriers are welcome, but jogging strollers and wagons are not, and some exhibitions do not allow strollers. Water in a closed bottle is the only drink allowed. metmuseum.org: visitor guidelines
Children 12 and under enter The Met free, and the 81st Street Studio, a free art-and-science play space for ages 3 to 11 and their families, needs no museum ticket. The museum offers free family gallery guides to download (for example on the Temple of Dendur and on arms and armor) and free drop-in family programs, and it has a family restroom on the Ground Floor, changing stations in most restrooms and a lactation room on Floor 4. Children 12 and under must always be with an adult. metmuseum.org: Families · metmuseum.org: Visitor Guidelines
With a Met ticket you can eat at The American Wing Cafe (Floor 1), The Great Hall Balcony Cafe (Floor 2) or the Lehman Cafe Cart (Floor 1), and the family-friendly Eatery opens at weekends. Food and drink are not allowed in the galleries, but your ticket gives all-day entry, including re-entry, on the date printed on it. metmuseum.org: Food and Drink · metmuseum.org: Families (FAQ)
No: The Met does not require advance tickets, and you can buy them at the museum. Buying online lets you go straight to any gallery entrance, and every ticket also includes same-day entry to The Met Cloisters. metmuseum.org: Plan your visit
Yes: The Met Fifth Avenue is accessible to wheelchair users and others who need to avoid stairs, with accessible entrances at Fifth Avenue and 81st Street and through the parking garage at Fifth Avenue and 80th Street, and staff will help you find elevators and step-free routes. Manual wheelchairs, standard and wide, can be borrowed first come, first served from the coat check at the 81st Street entrance. A visitor with a disability pays a discounted $22, bought in person, and an accompanying care partner enters free. metmuseum.org: accessibility (Know Before You Go)
Tales of Museums is an independent app and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Translations, narration and the extra facts use AI and can contain mistakes, so for anything important, check the museum's official information and the linked sources. Please follow the museum's photography rules.