From the High Line (a decommissioned elevated railway turned into a public park) and murals to galleries showing work from both emerging and established artists, Chelsea is the arts district of Manhattan. The neighborhood has hundreds of galleries, all of which stemmed from one opening: the Chelsea Hotel. Now a luxury residence, the hotel opened in 1883 with the intention to value the arts and bring together people from all walks of life.

The Steinway piano factory was built in Queens' Astoria neighborhood in the 1870s, and the company still manufactures the iconic instruments in the building today. Several of the buildings in Astoria on 20th Avenue and 41st Street were actually part of Steinway’s company town. No housing existed around the factory when it was first built, so the company constructed rowhouses for workers.

Visitors to Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood can stop into the Brooklyn Art Library, which holds the world’s largest collection of sketchbooks. You can even check them out and page through the art inside. The library is the repository for the Sketchbook Project, where anyone can purchase a blank sketchbook, fill it with art, and return it for permanent display in the Williamsburg building.

Some of the most expensive places to live in the United States are located in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, earning it the nickname the Silk Stocking District. There’s also a stretch of Fifth Avenue (near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim and Central Park) lined with many historic mansions called “Millionaire’s Row.”

Bordered by Canal Street to the north, Vesey Street to the south, Broadway to the west, and West Street to the east, TriBeCa is an acronym that stands for “Triangle Below Canal.” A former historic warehouse district, today the lower Manhattan neighborhood is known for its trendy restaurants, luxury condominiums, and the celebrities who have homes there, including Taylor Swift plus Beyoncé and Jay-Z.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, Greenwich Village — located south of 14th Street and north of Houston Street in Manhattan — was the neighborhood for artists of all types. The 10th Street Studio building in the neighborhood was built specifically for artists and their needs; Winslow Homer was one of the many selling his art there. The neighborhood’s Hotel Albert hosted the likes of Mark Twain, Andy Warhol, and Jackson Pollock.

From the 1910s to the 1930s, Black residents poured into Upper Manhattan’s Harlem neighborhood as part of the Great Migration — not just from other parts of New York City but from all around the country. That spurred the Harlem Renaissance, a development that turned the neighborhood into an epicenter of Black culture. Literature and music took off, producing luminaries like Zora Neale Hurston,Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes and many others.

The Bronx — home to the Bronx Zoo, Yankee Stadium, and the city’s largest park, Pelham Bay Park — is the only borough that’s connected to the mainland. The other four are located on islands, surrounded by the city’s waterways, including the East River, the Hudson River, and the Long Island Sound. Brooklyn and Queens lie on Long Island, while Manhattan and Staten Island are on their respective self-named islands.

Though Queens is the largest borough in New York City by land area — 109 square miles — it’s the second-largest borough by population. The heaviest populated is Brooklyn, with a population of 2.59 million people. To put that number into perspective, if Brooklyn were its own city, it would be the fourth-most populous city in the country. Queens ranks next in population, followed by Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island.

Since 1898, New York City has been separated into five boroughs: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. They each belong to a respective county and have their own governmental entity, overseen by the main governmental system in the city. Each of the boroughs has developed its own unique cultural identity and is home to a diverse set of neighborhoods within.