American Museum of Natural History – one of New York’s Most Enthralling Tourist Attractions

For 150-years the American Museum of Natural History has been dispelling the myth that museums are boring, offering visitors a fun-filled and educational day out that the whole family can enjoy.

While you may not have visited the museum in person just yet, chances are you’ve already been inside its majestic walls as the grandiose building was used as the setting for Hollywood blockbuster film Night at the Museum.

The film is full of impressive scenes featuring pirates, mummies and other weird and wonderful characters, but as the saying often goes sometimes fact is even stranger than fiction and in the case of this popular tourist attraction that proverb certainly holds water.

Throughout its 4 floors of science, history and nature exhibits, the American Natural History Museum features some truly awe-inspiring sights, including a 94-foot blue whale – the largest living creature in history – and a 34-ton section of a meteorite, which is the biggest on display anywhere in the world.

For Jurassic Park and general dinosaur enthusiasts, there’s also an exhibit featuring some of history’s most fearsome reptiles, which includes a 7-ton, 122-foot-long Titanosaur skeleton, as well as T. Rex: the Ultimate Predator, an interactive and fully immersive exhibition featuring life-sized models, fossils and engaging interactives. Visitors aged 12 and above can also try their hand at a virtual reality experience developed exclusively for the exhibition.

As well as leaving its visitors amazed by the many bewitching displays and artefacts on show, the museum also places a heavy emphasis on educational exhibits, with a number of subjects including astronomy, the oceans and butterfly conservation covered. This means that not only will visitors leave feeling astonished by some of the sites they’ve seen, but they’ll also take home some invaluable knowledge too.

Tickets can be purchased on the museum’s website, or alternatively, visitors can gain free entry with the New York Pass, which can be purchased here.

Click here for our guide on New York’s top attractions.