About New York City
Home to the Empire State Building, Times Square, Statue of Liberty and other iconic sites, New York City is a fast-paced, globally influential center of art, culture, fashion and finance. The city’s 5 boroughs sit where the Hudson River meets the Atlantic Ocean, with the island borough of Manhattan at the “Big Apple's" core. Situated on one of the world’s largest natural harbours, many districts and landmarks in New York City have become well known, and the city received a record 56 million tourists in 2014, hosting three of the world's ten most visited tourist attractions in 2013. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown, who sailed his ship La Dauphine into New York Harbor. With a census-estimated 2014 population of 8,491,079 distributed over a land area of just 305 square miles (790 km2), New York is the most densely populated major city in the United States. New York City has more than 2,000 arts and cultural organizations and more than 500 art galleries of all sizes. Winters are cold and damp, spring and autumn are unpredictable and can range from chilly to warm, summers are typically warm to hot and humid.