Manhattan Audio Tour: Faith, Fame, and Facades

Explore Manhattan at your own pace

Marble titans cast long shadows over Central Park, but secrets ripple beneath even the grandest facades of the Upper West Side.

Plug in for a self-guided audio tour that leads you through winding avenues and storied halls, unveiling dramatic histories and curiosities most passersby never suspect. Every turn peels back another layer of New York's restless soul.

Why did a standoff inside the San Remo send shockwaves through city politics? What vanished relic once lay beneath the dinosaurs at the American Museum of Natural History? Who left coded messages on the steps of New York Historical, sparking years of speculation?

Photo: Matteo Catanese, Unsplash

Tour details

• Duration: 1 hour 39 minutes, entirely at your own pace
• Distance: around 4.5 km (2.8 miles)
• Stops: 14 landmarks, including Rose Center for Earth and Space, American Museum of Natural History, New York Historical
• Audio: up to 35 minutes of narration
• Starts at: Rose Center for Earth and Space

Map data by Mapbox and OpenStreetMap contributors

How it works

• Book here and a redemption code arrives by email within minutes.
• Buying for a group? Choose one ticket per person: you get one code that works on every phone in your group.
• Download the free AudaTours app on your phone and enter the code.
• Download the tour once and the whole thing works offline.
• Walk to the first stop and press play. The audio for each landmark starts automatically as you approach it, so your phone can stay in your pocket.

There is no fixed date and no start time. The date you pick at checkout does not matter, and the tour stays on your phone permanently, so you can use it whenever you next visit and walk it again as often as you like.

What is included

• Professionally narrated audio that plays automatically at each stop
• An interactive map showing the walking route between landmarks
• Full offline access once downloaded, so you need no data or signal
• Freedom to start, pause and resume whenever you like
• Lifetime access - your code never expires

Photo: Mohamed Osama, Unsplash

Where you will stop

• Rose Center for Earth and Space
• American Museum of Natural History
• New York Historical
• The San Remo
• The Majestic
• The Beresford
• Congregation Rodeph Sholom
• Central Park West Historic District
• City Congregation for Humanistic Judaism
• The El Dorado
• Congregation Shaare Zedek
• Claremont Riding Academy
• B'nai Jeshurun
• Broadway United Church of Christ

Image: AudaTours

What is AudaTours?

AudaTours turns a walk through a city into a story. Our guides bring landmarks to life with the history, the scandals and the detail you would never get from a plaque.

• Immersive: real stories about the places in front of you, not a dry commentary
• Offline: download once and use it with no data, anywhere
• At your own pace: start, pause and resume whenever you want
• Accurate: every story is built from verified historical sources and checked before release

Good to know

• This is a self-guided audio tour on your own phone. There is no in-person guide.
• It does not include entry to any building or site along the route.
• The landmarks on the tour are not affiliated with AudaTours.
• You need a smartphone with Android 7.0 or later, or iOS 16 or later.
• Bring headphones and start with a charged phone.

Who it suits

Solo travellers, couples, families and small groups who would rather explore on their own schedule than follow a guide and a fixed departure time. It suits a first visit, and it suits anyone who has already seen the famous sights and wants to know what actually happened in them.

Image credits

Photos: Jim.henderson (Wikimedia Commons, public domain); Matteo Catanese, Mohamed Osama, Jorge Fernández Salas, Thomas Bormans, Denil Dominic (Unsplash).