Times Square

The dazzling crossroads of Manhattan spreads around the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue in Midtown, a place defined above all by its towering, ceaseless walls of illuminated electronic billboards. Long known as Longacre Square, it was renamed in 1904 after The New York Times moved its headquarters into the new tower at its southern end and marked the occasion with a public fireworks display.

It became the symbol of the city's restless energy. By the early twentieth century the area had grown into the centre of the Broadway theatre district, and its electric signs multiplied until the surrounding blocks glowed as brightly by night as by day. After a long period of decline, crime and seediness in the later twentieth century, a sweeping clean-up transformed it into the heavily commercial, family-oriented spectacle seen today.

The New Year's Eve celebration is its most famous moment. Since 1907 an illuminated ball has descended slowly down a pole atop one of the buildings as midnight strikes on the last day of the year, watched in the freezing cold by enormous crowds packed into the square and by a global television audience numbering many hundreds of millions.

For visitors it is loud, crowded and unmistakable. Pedestrian plazas carved out of the former traffic lanes now offer places to sit and gaze upward amid the throng, costumed characters work the tourists for tips, and the surrounding streets hold theatres, megastores and restaurants. It is busiest and most striking after dark, is served by one of the city's largest subway hubs, and lies within easy walking distance of Broadway shows and the towers of Midtown. Free of charge and never truly closing, it is among the most visited and most photographed public spaces anywhere on earth.