Newark audiotours

Newark is one of the oldest cities in the United States, chartered in 1666 by Puritans from New Haven, and for most of its history it was a serious manufacturing and commercial city in its own right, not a suburb of anything. The Prudential Center arena anchors the downtown, but the more interesting architecture is found walking through the Broad Street corridor and up to Military Park, where the Newark Museum of Art holds one of the largest collections of Tibetan Buddhist art outside Asia. Few cities of Newark's size operate at this level of institutional ambition.

The Ironbound neighborhood, wedged between the rail yards and the Passaic River, is the most energetic part of the city.

Its name comes from the iron tracks that originally bounded it, but the neighborhood is now synonymous with the largest Portuguese and Brazilian community in New Jersey. Ferry Street is the main artery, lined with churrascaria and bacalhau restaurants, Portuguese bakeries serving custard tarts, and the kind of sidewalk activity that belongs to a neighborhood confident in its own identity.