The Bronx
The only borough on the mainland, the Bronx sits just above Manhattan but operates on its own terms entirely. Start at the New York Botanical Garden, where the Thain Family Forest — thousands of years old and the largest remaining tract of original forest in New York City — grows quietly alongside the rose gardens and glass conservatory. This is a borough where a hemlock forest, a Greek Revival mansion, and the birthplace of hip hop can all claim equal ground.
The Bronx rewards lateral movement. Woodlawn Cemetery is a National Historic Landmark where Duke Ellington and Herman Melville are buried and guided tours are genuinely worth your time. Yankee Stadium anchors the south. Wave Hill, out in Riverdale, looks west over the Hudson toward the New Jersey Palisades.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who come back tend to build a loop: morning at the Botanical Garden before the crowds arrive, then lunch in Belmont — the neighborhood around Arthur Avenue — before an afternoon at the Bronx Zoo, the largest urban zoo in the country. The Edgar Allan Poe Cottage in Fordham surprises almost everyone who finds it.
Deals in The Bronx
Book directly at the providerHow The Bronx came to be
In June 1639, a Swedish immigrant named Jonas Bronck sailed from Holland to New Amsterdam with his wife and farmhands and established a farm he called Emmaus. He died in 1643, but the land kept his name — people would say they were going to visit the Broncks, and it stuck. The western portion was annexed to New York City in 1874, the eastern sections in 1895, and on January 1, 1898, the Bronx became a borough of Greater New York. Bronx County itself was formally separated from Manhattan in 1914.
The Grand Concourse rose in the early twentieth century as one of the borough's defining streets, and for decades the Bronx was a destination for working- and middle-class families. From the mid-1960s through the 1970s, arson waves and disinvestment gutted large parts of the South Bronx. Out of that same period came something else: the block parties in the early 1970s where Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, and Grandmaster Caz built the foundations of hip hop. Population growth returned in the late 1990s and has continued since.
Who and what shaped it
People who shaped it
Landmark buildings
Plan your visit
On the map
When to go
New York winters reach the Bronx fully — cold, occasionally snowy, and raw near the water. Summers are hot and humid, though the tree cover in the Botanical Garden and Van Cortlandt Park makes a difference. April through June and September through October are the most comfortable months to move around outside.
Right now
Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.