The Bronx is the only New York borough attached to the mainland, and it gets fewer visitors than it deserves. It has the city’s largest park, one of the world’s great zoos, a botanical garden, the Yankees and the best Italian food street in New York. It’s also where hip-hop started.
Yankee Stadium
Yankee Stadium is right by the 161st Street station on the 4, B and D trains. Even outside baseball season, stadium tours are available. On game days, arrive early and eat in the neighborhood before heading in.
The Bronx Zoo and the New York Botanical Garden
The two sit across Fordham Road from each other in Bronx Park. The zoo is huge, so pick a few areas rather than trying to see all of it. The Botanical Garden has a Victorian glass conservatory, an old-growth forest and seasonal shows. Both deserve half a day.
Arthur Avenue
Arthur Avenue in the Belmont neighborhood is the Bronx’s Little Italy, and many New Yorkers think it’s the real one. Walk through the Arthur Avenue Retail Market, pick up fresh mozzarella and bread, and have lunch at one of the old family restaurants. It’s a short walk from the Botanical Garden.
The Grand Concourse
The Grand Concourse is a wide boulevard lined with Art Deco apartment buildings. The Bronx Museum of the Arts on the Concourse is free and focuses on contemporary art. Further north, the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage is the small house where Poe lived in the 1840s.
Pelham Bay Park and City Island
Pelham Bay Park is the largest park in the city, more than three times the size of Central Park, and Orchard Beach is its summer crowd-pleaser. Next to it, City Island feels like a New England fishing village, with seafood restaurants along City Island Avenue and boats in every direction.
Riverdale and Wave Hill
In the northwest corner of the borough, Riverdale is hilly, leafy and quiet. Wave Hill, a public garden and cultural center on an old estate, has one of the best views of the Hudson and the Palisades anywhere in the city.
Where hip-hop started
In August 1973, DJ Kool Herc played a back-to-school party in the rec room of 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Morris Heights neighborhood, and that party is widely credited as the birth of hip-hop. The building is still a residential apartment building, so there’s nothing to go inside, but fans still come to see it.
Our list of weekend ideas includes an Arthur Avenue lunch you can pair with the Botanical Garden.
