Statue of Liberty

If you can handle the 354 steps to the crown, then make sure to go all the way to the top. There are 25 windows from which you can look out over New York harbour, Governors Island, Brooklyn and Manhattan. Stays in the crown are limited to 10 minutes. Another must is the museum, which has an exhibition chronicling the history of the statue from its design by Frédéric Bartholdi and engineering by Gustave Eiffel in France to its assembly and erection in New York in the 1880s. There are hundreds of photographs from the period. The museum’s star attraction is the statue’s original torch, which was replaced in 1984.

With millions of visitors every year, the Statue of Liberty isn’t the sort of place you saunter up to without a ticket. It’s one of New York’s most in-demand attractions, so pre-purchase is absolutely essential. We recommend a guided tour with fast-track admission. What’s more, many tours also include a visit to Ellis Island, where more than 12 million immigrants were processed. You can also simply take it in from the deck of a boat that sails around the island.

Liberty Island is tiny, so it’s quick and easy to explore. If you want to go to the crown, then a visit will take longer as you need to climb a spiral staircase to the top – the equivalent of about 14 storeys – and then you have a maximum of 10 minutes inside the crown viewing platform. Overall, plan for about 2 hours on Liberty Island.

To avoid the crowds, arrive as early as possible in the morning. The busiest times are generally between 12:00 and 15:00. Wednesday tends to be the day with the fewest visitors, while Saturday and Sunday are the days of the week with the highest footfall.

The New Colossus speaks of the Statue of Liberty as the beacon of hope that greets immigrants who passed it on their way to a new life in the New World. One of the fundraisers for the statue’s pedestal asked poet Emma Lazarus to write a poem to help in the construction. After initially refusing, she penned the 14 lines that have become immortal and are stamped on a bronze plaque inside the statue. In particular, the words ‘Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free’, have come to be seen as the embodiment of American’s openness. As such, many experts believe that Lazarus’s poem changed the symbolism of the statue from ‘liberty’ to ‘welcome to America’.