Times Square, Broadway, & Midtown Manhattan Free Tour

Midtown Manhattan is where New York performs itself: a few blocks of screens, marquees and office towers built over what used to be a reservoir and a paupers' burial ground. This tour starts at 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue, right by Bryant Park — once that same potter's field, now the lawn behind the New York Public Library — before pushing into Times Square, renamed in 1904 when the New York Times moved its offices there and lit up the block. From there it's a walk through the Broadway theatre district and the plazas of Rockefeller Center, reading the billboards, box offices and towers that make this stretch of Midtown the most photographed few blocks in the city.

Groups are capped at just six people, so the walk stays a conversation: your guide explains how a red-light district turned into a global stage, why the Times Square Ball has dropped here every New Year's Eve since 1907, and where locals actually go to dodge the tourist crush.