Liberty Science Center

Nine floors of exhibits in Liberty State Park, with the Statue of Liberty and the whole Lower Manhattan skyline in the windows. The centre goes broad rather than narrow — microbiology and infection in one gallery, an eye-level treehouse and nature centre in another, engineering, construction, a large aquarium tank and live animal presentations elsewhere.

Skyscraper is the one people talk about afterwards: a steel beam suspended high above the atrium floor, which you walk across in a harness. It is entirely safe and still takes most people a moment at the near end.

The Jennifer Chalsty Planetarium is the largest in the Western Hemisphere, an eighty-nine-foot dome that fills your entire field of vision for astronomy shows and immersive films. Outside, the park paths run along the water toward the ferry docks for Liberty and Ellis Islands.