24 places worth the trip in United States, grouped by what they are. Every guide explains what to see, the best time to go and the practical details, checked against official sources. Best time to visit United States: Apr–Jun, Sep–Oct.
The largest city in the United States, spread across five boroughs on the islands and shores of New York Harbor. Manhattan holds the famous skyline, Broadway and Central Park, while Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island add their own neighbourhoods, beaches and food.
ExploreThe most populous city in California and the second most populous in the United States, spread across a basin between the Pacific and the mountains. Founded as a Spanish pueblo in 1781, it grew into the centre of the American film industry and today offers beaches, major museums, viewpoints such as Griffith Observatory and some of the country's most varied food.
ExploreThe largest city in Nevada, founded as a railroad town in 1905 and now known worldwide for the casino resorts, shows and restaurants of the Las Vegas Strip. Downtown's Fremont Street keeps the city's older neon heart alive, and desert landscapes such as Red Rock Canyon lie within half an hour.
ExploreMiami is a city on Biscayne Bay shaped by Cuban and wider Latin American culture, and Miami Beach is the separate resort city on the barrier islands across the water. South Beach holds the Miami Beach Architectural District, some 960 historic buildings in Art Deco, Mediterranean Revival and Miami Modern styles facing the Atlantic.
ExploreNew Orleans was founded by the French in 1718 on a bend of the Mississippi, and the French Quarter, or Vieux Carré, is the original town: about 85 blocks of Spanish-era townhouses, Creole cottages and iron-lace balconies around Jackson Square. It is the city's most visited neighbourhood and a National Historic Landmark, known for live jazz, Creole restaurants and Bourbon Street's nightlife.
ExploreChicago is the third-largest city in the United States, set on the south-western shore of Lake Michigan. Rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1871, it became the birthplace of the steel-framed skyscraper, and today its riverfront towers, lakeside parks, museums, blues and jazz clubs and local food make it one of America's great city breaks.
ExploreA national park of about 4,900 square kilometres in northern Arizona, protecting the canyon the Colorado River has carved into the Colorado Plateau over about 445 kilometres. The gorge averages around 1,200 metres deep and exposes rock layers that UNESCO describes as a geological record of some two billion years.
ExploreA national park of nearly 1,200 square miles in California's Sierra Nevada, known above all for Yosemite Valley with its sheer granite walls, Half Dome, El Capitan and tall waterfalls. It also protects giant sequoia groves, high meadows and a vast wilderness, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
ExploreA national park of about 590 square kilometres in south-western Utah, centred on Zion Canyon, which the North Fork of the Virgin River has cut up to around 800 metres deep through red and cream sandstone. It is known for its canyon shuttle and for hikes such as The Narrows and Angels Landing.
ExploreYellowstone was set aside in 1872 as the world's first national park and covers about 8,980 square kilometres, mostly in Wyoming with small parts in Montana and Idaho. It sits on top of an active volcanic system that feeds more than 10,000 hydrothermal features, including well over half of the world's geysers, and it is home to bison, elk, wolves and grizzly bears.
ExploreEverglades National Park protects about 6,100 square kilometres of the southern tip of Florida, from freshwater sawgrass marshes to mangrove coasts and the shallow waters of Florida Bay. It was the first US national park created to protect a fragile ecosystem rather than scenery, and it is a World Heritage Site, an International Biosphere Reserve and a Ramsar wetland.
ExploreHawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, protects Kīlauea, one of the most active volcanoes on Earth, and Mauna Loa, the world's largest shield volcano. Its landscapes run from rainforest and steaming craters to the bare Kaʻū Desert and a coastline of fresh lava, and it is both a World Heritage Site and a sacred place in Hawaiian culture.
ExploreA suspension bridge across the Golden Gate, the strait linking San Francisco Bay with the Pacific Ocean, carrying US Highway 101 between San Francisco and Marin County. Opened in 1937, it was then the longest and tallest suspension bridge in the world, and its colour, towers and frequent wreaths of fog have made it the emblem of the city.
ExploreA copper statue on Liberty Island, given by the people of France and dedicated in 1886, and the nearby Ellis Island immigration station, through which more than 12 million people passed. Together they form Statue of Liberty National Monument, reached only by ferry.
ExploreThe open park at the heart of the US capital, running about three kilometres from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial and lined with more than 100 monuments and memorials and eleven free Smithsonian museums. The National Park Service calls it America's Front Yard.
ExploreA desert valley on the Colorado Plateau where sandstone buttes and pinnacles rise up to about 300 metres above the valley floor. It lies within the Navajo Nation, which manages it as Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, with a 27-kilometre scenic loop open to visitors.
ExploreManhattan's great public park, about four kilometres long and 800 metres wide, laid out from 1858 to the Greensward Plan of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. Its lawns, woodlands, lakes and bridges draw tens of millions of visits a year.
ExploreThe rugged coast between Carmel in the north and San Simeon in the south, where the Santa Lucia Mountains drop straight into the Pacific. Highway 1, completed in 1937, is the only road along it, linking state parks, redwood groves, viewpoints such as Bixby Bridge and McWay Falls, and a scattering of lodges and restaurants.
ExploreA pair of sandstone slot canyons on Navajo Nation land just outside Page, Arizona, shaped by flash floods into narrow corridors of curved, banded rock. They form part of Lake Powell Navajo Tribal Park and can only be entered on a guided tour with an authorised operator.
ExploreA town of under 10,000 people in Arizona's northern Verde Valley, set among red sandstone buttes and the Coconino National Forest. It is known for hiking and mountain biking, Jeep tours, art galleries and the canyon of Oak Creek, about two hours' drive from both Phoenix and the Grand Canyon.
ExploreThe capital of Massachusetts, founded by Puritan settlers in 1630 and a centre of the events that led to the American Revolution. The Freedom Trail links 16 historic sites over about 2.5 miles, from Boston Common to the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown.
ExploreA small, steep island about 1.25 miles off the San Francisco waterfront, run by the National Park Service as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Best known for the federal penitentiary that operated from 1934 to 1963, it also has Civil War-era fortifications, the oldest operating lighthouse on the West Coast and seabird colonies, and is a National Historic Landmark.
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