Washington Square Park

Fifth Avenue ends at a marble arch, and on the far side of it the city loosens its tie. Washington Square has been the Village's front room for well over a century: chess players at the stone tables in the southwest corner, students sprawled on the fountain rim, a pianist who somehow wheels a baby grand to the foot of the Arch most warm afternoons. The park is small enough to cross in five minutes and busy enough that you probably won't.

The Arch itself, designed by Stanford White and completed in 1892 to mark the centennial of Washington's inauguration, frames one of the better free views in Manhattan — straight up Fifth Avenue, with the Empire State Building rising in the gap on clear days. Stand under it at dusk and the avenue's lights stack into the distance like a theater set.

This is less a park you visit than one you fall into on the way somewhere else. Come with a coffee from one of the cafés on MacDougal, claim a bench on the quieter northern paths, and let the Village's whole ecosystem — dog runs, debates, saxophone — carry on around you.