New York City

Nickname: "Big Apple", "Gotham

The City of New York is a global economic center, with its business, finance, trading, law, and media organizations influential worldwide. The city is also an important cultural center, with many museums, galleries, and performance venues. Home of the United Nations, the city is a hub for international diplomacy.

New York City comprises five boroughs, each of which are coterminous with a county: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. The city has many neighborhoods and landmarks known around the world: The Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, in Lower Manhattan, has been a dominant global financial center since World War II and is home to the New York Stock Exchange. The city has been home to several of the tallest buildings in the world, including the Empire State Building and the former twin towers of the World Trade Center. The city is the birthplace of many American cultural movements, including the Harlem Renaissance in literature and visual art, abstract expressionism in painting, and hip hop along with the Tin Pan Alley in music.

The mainland and many islands of New York are linked by a network of bridges and tunnels, including the Brooklyn Bridge and Holland Tunnel.

The city was founded as the colony of New Amsterdam by Dutch colonists in the early 17th century. The five boroughs were consolidated into one city in 1898. It has been central to the development of the United States, serving as the nation's first capital city in 1789, and has had a large influence in American media, finance, and politics. It is the site of some of the country's largest celebrations in size, including ticker-tape parades for returning astronauts and the celebrations in Times Square of the end of World War II.

Manhattan contains the major business and financial centers of the city and many cultural attractions, including numerous museums, the Broadway theatre district and Madison Square Garden.