The Cloisters

A branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

If only the Cloisters weren’t quite so far uptown! The medieval art museum, a small branch of the mammoth Metropolitan, is an oasis of quiet—and not just in terms of volume. The stillness of the place, from the enclosed gardens to the chapel-like architecture, inspires a more transcendent quiet, the kind that permeates your skin and settles into your soul. If I didn’t have to take a forty-some-minute subway ride to get there, I might visit more often.