The High Line New York: The Complete Visitor Guide

The High Line is Manhattan's most successful urban transformation — a 2.33-kilometre elevated park built on a disused freight rail line that once served the meatpacking district's slaughterhouses, threading through Chelsea and Hudson Yards above street level. Opened in stages between 2009 and 2014, it has become the most visited public space in New York after Central Park: an extraordinary combination of landscape architecture, public art, and some of Manhattan's most dramatic views, threaded through a neighbourhood that it has almost single-handedly remade.

The park runs from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District north to 34th Street at the Hudson Yards development. Entry is free from any of the multiple staircase and elevator access points along the route; the full walk takes about 45 minutes at a leisurely pace. The planting design — native grasses, perennials, and wildflowers installed by landscape architects James Corner Field Operations and Piet Oudolf — changes through the seasons and is most spectacular in late spring and early autumn when the ornamental grasses flower.

The public art programme along the route is one of the most ambitious in New York: site-specific installations commissioned by Friends of the High Line change regularly and have included work by Kara Walker, Jenny Holzer, and Jeff Koons. The Chelsea galleries below and around the High Line are among the most significant in the US — walking down and into the gallery district is the natural extension of any High Line visit.

The best times: early morning (before 9am) for the quietest experience and the best light on the Hudson. Sunset from the 14th Street section looking west over the river is spectacular. Avoid weekend afternoons when the park reaches uncomfortable crowd density. The Whitney Museum of American Art is at the southern end; combining the two makes a full arts afternoon.