Cloisters

The Met is a beautiful place to visit on any day, but if it’s just too gorgeous to be indoors, you might consider heading to its spectacular outside annex instead. Set in Fort Tryon Park overlooking the Hudson River, the Cloisters museum, built in the 1930s, incorporates fragments of old French and Spanish monasteries, and houses the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection of medieval frescoes, tapestries and paintings. Summer is the best time to visit, when concerts take place in the grounds and more than 250 varieties of medieval flowers and herbs are on view. Works are set in galleries – connected by grand archways and topped with Moorish terra-cotta roofs – that sit around an airy courtyard. Among the many rare treasures you’ll get to gaze at are a 9th-century gold plaque of St John the Evangelist, ancient stained-glass panels depicting historic religious scenes, an English-made ivory sculpture of the Virgin and Child dating from 1290, and the stunning 12th-century Saint-Guilhem Cloister, made of French limestone and standing 30ft high.