Американский музей естественной истории (AMNH): Билеты

The AMNH houses the world's largest collection of dinosaur skeletons and fossils, with terrifying reptiles of all shapes and sizes displayed across two dedicated exhibition halls located on the fourth floor. In the Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs, you'll meet stomping, chomping apex predators like T. rex and Allosaurus, as well as smaller hunters like Deinonychus and Velociraptor. You might have seen the movies, but nothing can prepare you for standing toe-to-toe with prehistory's most ferocious carnivores, even if they have been dead for over 65 million years!

In the Hall of Ornithischian Dinosaurs, you'll find gentler giants like Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Corythosaurus, and other humongous herbivores. One unmissable dino highlight is the museum's Titanosaur, a 122-foot-long sauropod from Patagonia in Argentina, which will greet you at the orientation center for the various fossil halls. Cast from one of the biggest dinosaur skeletons ever unearthed, the AMNH Titanosaur is so big that it can't all fit inside the enormous hall, and its head pokes around the door to welcome visitors inside! So it really is unmissable!

There's no shortage of things to take your breath away at the AMNH. In addition to the museum's record-holding dinosaur collection, the other fossil halls are home to more amazing creatures from prehistory to the present day and are well worth checking out. There's an incredible planetarium for adorers of outer space to get starry-eyed in, and a 94-foot-long blue whale model suspended from the ceiling of the first-floor Hall of Ocean Life. It might not be an actual specimen, but it gives you a very real idea about the colossal size of the world's largest-ever animal. It also probably smells a whole lot better than a real whale would!

The Willamette Meteorite is another must-see at the museum. This 15.5-ton iron space rock was once part of the molten core of a planet that was shattered and spat across the solar system millions of years ago. Ominously orbiting our planet for eons, it touched down on Earth's surface sometime during the last Ice Age at a zippy 64,000 kilometers per hour! Another unmissable exhibit is the cast of Lucy – the oldest and most complete skeleton of early hominid that was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, dating from two million years ago!

With 45 permanent exhibition halls spread across 26 interconnected buildings, the American Museum of Natural History can provide countless hours of exploration. You can spend anywhere from two hours to an entire afternoon gazing in wonder at its seemingly endless collection of dinosaur fossils, animals, plants, minerals, meteorites, and anthropological remains and artifacts without ever getting bored. And that's without even mentioning its huge planetarium, library, or its diverse array of temporary exhibitions.

To see all of the American Museum of Natural History, you really need more than one visit. But the museum's intuitive layout makes it easy to see the things you are interested in if your visit is limited for time. It's best to have a half-day, or even a whole day to dedicate to your visit so you can enjoy spending as much time as you like browsing each exhibit without feeling rushed.

With 34 million items, specimens, and artifacts in its immense collection, there's no way the American Museum of Natural History can display all of its treasures at any one time, and even seeing a fraction of what's on display in one visit is no mean feat. Luckily though, the AMNH has a wealth of virtual resources that you can use to supplement your visit, or to explore its vast collection if you are unable to make it to the museum.

The AMNH provides a range of virtual visits in conjunction with Google Arts and Culture, as well as a range of free virtual field trips and other engaging educational resources that bring the museum experience to your fingertips. The AMNH also hosts live guided virtual tours through the exhibition halls, which are available to view retrospectively on the museum's social media.

The American Museum of Natural History has a museum shop befitting of its enormous size and world-class status. The AMNH museum shop is a three-level megastore of natural history museum memorabilia and gifts that you should dedicate at least a portion of your visit to. On each level there's a unique shopping experience, with a fancy fine gifts gallery, a reading and viewing room, and a kid-friendly floor designed around fun and discovery.

No matter which part of the museum you liked best, the museum shop probably has a souvenir to help preserve the memory of it. There's a wealth of educational books, games, toys, and kits, as well as jewellery inspired by world cultures, entertaining puzzles, trendy museum clothes and accessories, and of course, lots of cuddly stuffed dinosaurs and animals.