Manhattan's midtown district is one of the most vibrant metropolitan areas in the world and much of the energy that courses through it originates from Times Square. Everywhere you look the buildings are clad in a dazzling array of high-tech billboards, including the famous Dow Jones "Zipper," the signature Budweiser and Coca Cola signs and the huge NBC/Panasonic Altrovision Video Screen. Appropriately enough, given the wealth of shows, dinner theatres, jazz clubs, piano bars, excellent restaurants and shops it offers, Times Square also contains New York's first multi-service tourist centre. And it is here, on New Year's Eve, that half a million people congregate to watch the celebrated thousand-pound Waterford Crystal Ball descending, while half a billion more watch on television throughout the world.

From Times Square it is easy to orient yourself around the midtown district thanks to the simple grid system by which Manhattan Island's streets are laid out. To the east you'll find a wealth of imposing office buildings, stores and trendy restaurants. Landmarks include Grand Central Station, St Patrick's Cathedral, the United Nations and the astonishing Chrysler Building, with its stainless steel, stepped-dome crown surmounted by a tapering spire.

Almost as eye-catching, and fascinating to wander round, is the Rockefeller Center. If you enter this 11-acre, art-deco marvel on Fifth Avenue, between 49th and 50th Streets, you'll pass through the beautiful gardens to the sub-ground restaurant area, which becomes an ice skating rink in winter, lending special enchantment to the holiday season. Meanwhile Fifth Avenue and 57th Street boasts one of the world's most exclusive shopping districts, its stores a role call of iconic names such as Tiffany's, Saks, Bloomingdales and Bergdorf Goodman.

The midtown area south of Times Square is slightly less commercial and more residential than that to the east and is dominated by an enduring landmark: the Empire State Building. Though no longer the tallest structure in New York, it is still one of its most elegant. Every night it is bathed in floodlights, their colours altered, as the year progresses, to commemorate different events: red, white, and blue for Independence Day; green for St. Patrick's Day; red, black, and green for Martin Luther King Day; blue and white for Hanukkah. The area's other great landmark is Madison Square Garden, an arena which, as well as being the home to the legendary Nicks basketball team, has played host to some of the greatest entertainers of all time, including Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Madonna, Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley.

North midtown Manhattan, bordering the southern edge of Central Park, offers some stunning buildings devoted to both high and popular culture. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA to its friends) contains the world's greatest collection of paintings and sculptures from the late 19th century to the present, including such priceless acquisitions as van Gogh's "Starry Night" and Monet's "Water Lilies". Radio City Music Hall boasts a gigantic theatre and an extraordinary Roccoco interior, its stage's burnished arches conveying the impression of the sun setting on the horizon. Carnegie Hall, meanwhile, is an arena that combines peerless acoustics with stunning architecture. Orchestras from across the globe perform in its main hall and the intimate Weill Hall is used for vocal and instrumental recitals and chamber music.