The Met was founded in 1870 with an ambition that still defines it: to bring art from many cultures and periods together within one encyclopedic museum. Unlike institutions centred mainly on one era, The Met lets you move from an Egyptian temple to Roman sculpture, Renaissance painting, Islamic decorative arts, American interiors and modern art in the course of a single visit.

That breadth is what makes the museum extraordinary — but also what makes it potentially overwhelming. The collection is better experienced as a series of small museums inside one enormous museum. Egyptian Art has its own logic; European Paintings another; the American Wing another again. Even a single department, such as Greek and Roman Art, contains tens of thousands of objects covering several millennia.

The Met is also not a static “permanent collection.” Galleries are continuously reinstalled, new acquisitions enter the displays, and ongoing exhibitions draw fresh connections within the holdings. In 2026, for example, the museum lists numerous ongoing collection presentations alongside temporary exhibitions.

There is no single artistic narrative here. The strength of The Met lies precisely in putting civilisations, movements and individual masters into a much larger historical continuum.

You can encounter artists as different as Vermeer, Rembrandt, Velázquez, El Greco, Van Gogh, Degas, Monet, Tiffany and Pollock, then walk into galleries where individual authorship is unknown and the objects belong instead to cultures, workshops or ancient traditions.

Pick a theme, not a floor.

For example:

• Once-in-a-lifetime masterpieces: Dendur → Old Masters → Impressionists → American Wing.
• Painting route: El Greco → Velázquez → Rembrandt → Vermeer → Monet → Van Gogh.
• Slow Art route: choose just five works and spend ten minutes with each.