Within Hudson Heights, the most prestigious co-op developments are the 1920s-era Hudson View Gardens and the 1930s-era Castle Village. The latter features striking views of the Palisades and the GW Bridge. If you venture onto the grounds, though, a uniformed guard might ask you to leave. Farther north, at Fort Washington Avenue and 190^th Street, stands the St. Francis Xavier Cabrini Shrine, dedicated to the first American citizen to be canonized.

East of Broadway, at 187^th and Amsterdam, stands the Washington Heights campus of Yeshiva University, Orthodox Judaism’s main institute for higher learning in the U.S. The men’s undergraduate school and the rabbinical seminary are located here. Orthodox Judaism is also represented west of Broadway—by the Breuers, a sect that originated in Germany. On the Sabbath, you can see black-hatted, bearded men and long-skirted women promenading down Bennett Avenue.

Inside Fort Tryon Park, stretching from 190^th to Dyckman Street, are the famous Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection of medieval art. John D. Rockefeller, who owned the land before he donated it to the city, bought the core of the collection from sculptor George Barnard. He then built a home for it, incorporating cloisters from five French monasteries. Everybody admires the Unicorn Tapestries, depicting the hunt for the mythical beast. But my favorites are the miniature replicas of Biblical scenes that medieval craftsmen painstakingly carved from wood. Every September, the park hosts a Medieval Festival, with jugglers, jousting, music and displays of falconry.