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An Apollonaut travel guide
The place behind the collection.
A Beaux-Arts façade, an Egyptian temple and a collection that spans five thousand years offer several ways into the story of The Met.
On this page
A museum for New York
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 and opened its first galleries at 681 Fifth Avenue in 1872. In 1880 it moved to its present site on the edge of Central Park.
Today it holds around 1.5 million works, from ancient Egypt to the present day.
A façade on Fifth Avenue
Richard Morris Hunt and Richard Howland Hunt designed the Beaux-Arts façade, the Great Hall and the Grand Stairway; McKim, Mead & White completed the wings along Fifth Avenue in 1910.
The building is a New York City landmark and has been a National Historic Landmark since 1986.
An Egyptian temple in Manhattan
The Temple of Dendur, built under the emperor Augustus in Nubia, was given to the United States in 1965 and opened at The Met in 1978.
This history belongs to the place and the people who shaped it. The History page offers a longer introduction, and the timeline gives a short route through selected milestones.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
Links lead to the original publishers.
