Manhattan Tour

Four and a half hours crossing Manhattan from north to south, from John Lennon to Ground Zero, with someone who knows where to stop and what stories to tell: the Tour of Manhattan is one of the most comprehensive bus tours of the Big Apple. Aboard a private coach bus with a live guide in Italian, it takes you from the tree-lined avenues of the Upper West Side all the way to the One World Trade Center, covering in sequence all the neighborhoods that make up the most famous island in the world.

On the Tour of Manhattan in Italian, the coach departs from the Times Square area and immediately heads north: the first stop is the Upper West Side, where you’ll see the Dakota Building, the Liberty building where John Lennon lived and in front of which his memorial is located, and the Museum of Natural History. Crossing through Central Park, you’ll reach the Upper East Side with the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Heading down toward Midtown, you’ll pass by the Plaza Hotel, Trump Tower, along 5th Avenue, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and the legendary Grand Central Station. The tour then continues toward Downtown: the Flatiron Building, Greenwich Village, SoHo, Little Italy, Chinatown, the Wall Street district, views of the Statue of Liberty from Battery Park, and finally the One World Trade Center with the 9/11 Memorial, where the tour concludes.

Available every Monday and Friday, and also on Wednesdays in August, the Tour of Manhattan can be booked through Il Mio Viaggio a New York.

Highlights

• Dakota Building and John Lennon Memorial: the Liberty building where the Beatle lived, with Strawberry Fields right across from it.
• Central Park: crossing Manhattan’s green lung with the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir.
• Guggenheim and the Metropolitan Museum of Art: the two most famous museums on the Upper East Side.
• Grand Central Station: the ticket hall with its starry ceiling and central clock, featured in movies and animated films.
• Wall Street and Battery Park: the financial district with waterfront views of the Statue of Liberty.
• One World Trade Center and the 9/11 Memorial: the most emotional area of Downtown.

Itinerary

Uptown: Upper West Side, Dakota Building, and Central Park.

The Tour of Manhattan begins in the Times Square area and immediately heads north. The first area is the Upper West Side: the coach stops in front of the Dakota Building, the Liberty-style building overlooking Central Park West where John Lennon lived with Yoko Ono. Across from the entrance is Strawberry Fields, the memorial dedicated to him inside the park. A little further on, the American Museum of Natural History takes up an entire city block: the guide shares the history of the institution as the bus continues toward the park. Crossing Central Park, 341 hectares of greenery in the middle of Manhattan, leads into the Upper East Side, where you’ll see the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, the artificial lake named after the former First Lady who lived just a few blocks away.

Manhattan Tour in Italian: the Guggenheim, the MET, and Midtown.

In the second part of the Manhattan Tour, the route includes two of the most important museums in the world: the Guggenheim Museum (the white concrete spiral designed by Frank Lloyd Wright) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which alone occupies an entire side of Central Park on the Upper East Side. Continuing toward Midtown, the coach passes in front of the Plaza Hotel, the white building overlooking Central Park South where presidents and celebrities have stayed, and goes up 5th Avenue: Trump Tower, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral with its neo-Gothic spires among the skyscrapers, and finally Grand Central Station, the 1913 rail terminal famous for its ticket hall with the blue ceiling covered in zodiac signs and for the unique acoustics of its underground corridors. It’s the kind of stop that distinguishes organized New York tours from a simple independent walk: the guide reveals the station’s secrets that you won’t find in guidebooks.

Downtown: Flatiron, SoHo, Wall Street, and the 9/11 Memorial.

The final part of the Manhattan Tour heads south through neighborhoods that tell the most layered history of New York. The Flatiron Building, the iron-shaped skyscraper at the intersection of 5th Avenue and Broadway, is the first iconic landmark of Downtown, followed by Greenwich Village with its brick streets and historic cafés, SoHo with its lofts and galleries, Little Italy, and Chinatown—two neighborhoods with very strong identities just a few blocks apart. The Wall Street district comes before the stop at Battery Park, from where the Statue of Liberty can be seen across the water even without taking the ferry. The tour concludes at the One World Trade Center and the 9/11 Memorial: the two reflecting pools that occupy the exact footprint of the Twin Towers. Among all our tours, this is the one that covers the island of Manhattan most completely in a single morning.

Details

Included:

• Guided tour of Manhattan from Uptown to the 9/11 Memorial.
• Stops at the most iconic spots in New York.
• Private transfer in a coach bus
• Live guide in Italian for 4 and a half hours.
• Guaranteed seating

Not included:

• Pick up/Drop off in hotel
• Return to the starting point; the tour ends at the 9/11 Memorial.

Important:

1. The tour is available every Monday and Friday at 9:00 a.m. In August: also every Wednesday.
2. The tour may be multilingual.
3. The tour remains active in case of rain or snow.
4. Seats on the bus may vary; it is not possible to guarantee that participants with separate bookings will sit close to each other. If you are a group with separate reservations, please contact info@ilmioviaggioanewyork.com to be placed on the same bus.
5. There is no return to the starting point: the tour ends at the 9/11 Memorial / One World Trade Center.

Why Choose This Tour

The best way to start New York. The Manhattan Tour is designed as the first tour to take: four and a half hours that give you a complete overview of the island, where the neighborhoods are, how the pace changes from Uptown to Downtown, and how far the attractions are from each other. Those who take it on the first day of their trip move through the following days with an already formed mental map. Compared to a half-day tour of just one area, this covers all of Manhattan at once without having to go back and forth on your own.

The Italian-speaking guide makes the difference. On the Manhattan Tour, the guide is live throughout the entire route: not a prerecorded audio guide, but a person who answers questions, adapts the storytelling to the group, and focuses on the details that spark the most curiosity. The difference between simply passing by the Dakota Building and understanding who John Lennon was, why he lived there, and what happened that December evening in 1980 lies entirely in the voice of someone who knows the history and knows how to tell it in Italian.

From the Guggenheim to Ground Zero: the island seen as a whole. The Manhattan Tour crosses eleven distinct neighborhoods in a single morning: from the bohemian Upper West Side to the Midtown skyscrapers, from shopping-filled 5th Avenue to Chinatown, from SoHo to Wall Street. Each neighborhood has a different character, a different history, and a different population, and the guide presents them one by one without skipping any. It is the overview that prepares you for the rest of your trip to New York.

An Italian agency in New York since 2014. The Manhattan Tour in Italian is one of the historic products of Il Mio Viaggio a New York, the agency founded by Piero Armenti in 2014 that has been accompanying Italian travelers in the city for over ten years. The guides who lead the tour live in New York and describe Manhattan with the familiarity of people who actually live there, not of those who visit once a year. This is the reason why it remains one of the most in-demand tours in the catalog, year after year.

Quick Information

Important

AFTER BOOKING, YOU WILL RECEIVE A CONFIRMATION AND SUBSEQUENTLY YOUR VOUCHER.

PLEASE ALSO CHECK YOUR SPAM FOLDER.

IF YOU ARE A GROUP BUT MADE SEPARATE BOOKINGS, PLEASE SEND US AN EMAIL TO BE PLACED ON THE SAME BUS, OTHERWISE WE CANNOT GUARANTEE THAT YOU WILL ALL BE TOGETHER.

Do you want to have a more comprehensive visit of New York?
Combine the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn tour as well by clicking HERE