Wall Street/New York Stock Exchange

Of course no tour of New York City is complete without a stop at the high shrine of global finance, Wall Street. Although the New York Stock Exchange visitor’s gallery has been closed since 9/11 (Wall Street is now pedestrians only, one of the very few positive consequences of that event), it is still worth a walk down the narrow canyons of Wall Street and Broad Street, as the mind spins at the trillions of dollars being traded behind the Corinthian columns. At 26 Wall Street is Federal Hall, another key site in American history, where George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United States and where the Bill of Rights was signed in 1789.