Visiting the 9/11 Memorial & Museum: A Thoughtful Guide

The memorial: two pools where the towers stood

The memorial opened on September 11, 2011, the tenth anniversary of the attacks. Its design, called Reflecting Absence, is by architect Michael Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker. Two enormous square pools, each nearly an acre, sit within the footprints of the original North and South Towers. Water falls about 30 feet down their sides into a reflecting basin, then disappears into a smaller central void you can't see the bottom of.

Around the edges, bronze parapets carry the names of the 2,977 people killed on September 11, 2001, in New York, at the Pentagon and aboard Flight 93, along with the six people killed in the World Trade Center bombing of February 26, 1993. The names aren't alphabetical. They're arranged according to "meaningful adjacencies," placing colleagues, friends and family members side by side at the request of loved ones.

The memorial plaza is free and open to everyone, and you don't need a ticket to walk around the pools.

Inside the 9/11 Museum

The museum opened in May 2014 and lies mostly underground, descending to bedrock level beneath the plaza. It's a timed-ticket attraction, and advance booking is strongly recommended, especially in summer and on weekends.

Some of the most powerful spaces include:

• Foundation Hall, where a surviving section of the original slurry wall, built to hold back the Hudson River, rises beside the Last Column, a steel beam covered with mementos and inscriptions left by recovery workers.
• The Survivors' Stairs, a staircase that became an escape route for hundreds of people fleeing the site that morning.
• The Historical Exhibition, which tells the story of the day minute by minute through artifacts, photographs and recorded voices. It's intense, and photography is not permitted inside.
• In Memoriam, a gallery with portraits of the victims, where you can learn about individual lives.

Most people spend at least two hours in the museum. Take breaks when you need them; there are quieter spaces throughout, and nobody will think twice if you step out.

When to go and how long to allow

Allow about 30 minutes to an hour for the memorial and at least two hours for the museum. Mornings are usually calmer; the plaza can be very busy by midday in peak season. Visiting in the early evening, when the office crowds have gone and the light softens, is particularly peaceful.

On September 11 each year, the memorial holds a ceremony for victims' families. The plaza is reserved for families until mid-afternoon (in recent years it has opened to the public at 3 p.m.), and the museum is closed to the public all day. That evening, the Tribute in Light sends two columns of light into the sky above Lower Manhattan, visible for miles.

Nearby, take time for the FDNY Memorial Wall on the side of the Engine 10 and Ladder 10 firehouse on Liberty Street, and for St. Paul's Chapel on Broadway, which served as a place of rest for recovery workers in the months after the attacks. The Memorial Glade, dedicated in 2019, honors rescue and recovery workers and others who became sick or died from exposure to toxins at the site.