Yesterday Matt and I went to one of my favorite places in the city: the Panorama of the City of New York, located in the Queens Museum of Art, right across from the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. We took the 7 train — riding through Queens, past Jackson Heights, where my dad grew up and where I used to visit my grandparents, and continuing all the way out almost to the end of the line.

The Panorama of the City of New York is a huge scale model of the entire city. All five boroughs. Models of every building, every street, every park, every bridge — everything. Even all the random islands: Roosevelt Island, Governor’s Island, Ellis Island, Randall’s Island, et cetera. You really have to see it to believe it.

It’s contained in a big room, and there’s a walkway around the perimeter, so you can take your time and examine the city from any angle. It’s a great lesson in New York City geography. You enter on the Manhattan side, and as you make your way counterclockwise around the perimeter, getting further away from Manhattan, you realize just how small a part of New York City Manhattan really is. From the southern tip of Staten Island, the Financial District is so far away; once you’re out at the far reaches of Queens, Manhattan’s skyscrapers look even tinier. What’s also striking is that Manhattan is really the only part of the city with tall buildings; most of the rest of the outer boroughs is a vast valley of residential areas.

There’s even a tiny model of the Queens Museum of Art itself — the very building in which you’re standing. I’d like to think that inside that tiny museum is another tiny panorama of the city, containing an even tinier model of the museum, containing an even tinier panorama…

Anyway, a visit to the Panorama is a trek, but I think it’s a mandatory visit for anyone who loves and cares about New York.