79 Best Sights in Albany and Central New York, New York

Early televisions and kitchen appliances are part of a vast General Electric archive that traces the city's scientific and cultural history. Interactive children's displays explore science and technology.

Five miles west of Amsterdam is the only site with structures dating from all three stages of the Erie Canal's evolution, including the Schoharie Aqueduct. The earliest parts date from 1817. Exhibits in the visitor center show how the canal developed and include dress-up and coloring activities for children. The site has a small-boat launch and hiking, cross-country skiing, and bike trails.

Philip Schuyler, a Revolutionary War general, was the original owner of this 1763 Georgian mansion. George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were among the notable figures who visited the house. Tours of the national historic landmark (the only way to see the interior) feature original family furnishings, artifacts, and paintings.

The cave was discovered in 1928 on a farm just outside Cobleskill. An hour-long guided tour takes you 85 feet down, via winding stairs, and features fossils, stalagmites and stalactites, natural domes, and a 100-foot-high waterfall. The cavern temperature is usually 50°F, so dress accordingly.

Through exhibits and tours, the preservation group details the history of the Shaker movement. The site was home to the first Shaker settlement in the United States; it started in 1776 with about a dozen members and grew to about 350 members at its peak, in the mid-1900s. The 1848 meetinghouse, a clapboard structure with a tin roof, was the third meetinghouse built here. Guided tours ($3; Saturday 11:30 and 1:30) are available June through October.

The center, in a log building on the grounds of the Oneida Indian Nation, has exhibits highlighting baskets, beadwork, dolls, and wampum. You may also learn about the role of the Oneida Nation during the American Revolution, when it sided with the rebels rather than with the British.

This four-year coeducational college, founded in 1903, sponsors year-round cultural events and entertainment, and is the summer home of the New York State Writer's Institute.

About 18,000 students are enrolled at this state university, established in 1844. The quaint downtown campus, built in 1909, was modeled after the University of Virginia. The 1971 uptown campus is dominated by stark, massive arches. A large reflecting pool lies at the center of a quadrangle formed by four high-rise dorms and classrooms.

The amusement park, on the eastern shore of Oneida Lake, is loaded with old-fashioned fun. Attractions include an old-time carousel, bumper cars and boats, roller coaster, food vendors, and arcades.

Family portraits and period furnishings fill this 1798 Greek Revival home built for General Abraham Ten Broeck, a former Albany mayor. The tour takes you through the house and well-kept gardens.

The Oneida Indian Nation has transformed what began as a tiny bingo hall into a sprawling resort. The casino, one of the largest in the region, has more than 100 table games, including baccarat, blackjack, craps, and roulette; a poker room; and more than 2,400 slot machines. The spa and fitness facility has saunas, steam rooms, and an indoor pool. Available treatments include massages (hot-stone, couples, foot, full-body, etc.), facials, manicures and pedicures, exfoliation, body wraps, and waxing.

The 100-acre campus of this liberal-arts college founded in 1795 was the first in America to be designed by an architect. The grounds include Jackson's Garden, an oasis of perennials and herbs near a bubbling brook.

The massive limestone-and-granite building has 47-foot-high vaulted ceilings, marble pillars, a terrazzo floor, original steam-heated wooden benches, and a vintage barbershop that still gives haircuts. Train tours operated by Adirondack Scenic Railroad leave from the 1914 Italian Renaissance–style station for day trips into the Adirondack wilderness.

The free has three galleries with frequently rotating contemporary-art exhibits. The museum's permanent collection includes works by Richard Diebenkorn, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, and Robert Rauschenberg.

. This warship is the last of 565 destroyers used throughout World War II and the Cold War. Tours show the ship's restored armaments, crew and officers' quarters, radio room, and pilot house.

A brick building in the historic Main Street district houses four floors of hands-on exhibits for all ages. There's a Dinorama, with dinosaur models and fossils, and a Weather Room, with Doppler radar. Kiddies can walk into a replica Iroquois longhouse, don firefighting gear, and pretend to fly a 17-foot-long airplane. Outside you can explore the inside of an old Adirondack locomotive, dining car, and caboose parked alongside the building.

Siberian tigers, Alaskan grizzly bears, and California sea lions are some of the 200 animals that reside in this city park with views of the Mohawk Valley. A petting zoo and live animal shows are options in summer.

Artists, writers, and musicians from all over the United States come to this highly regarded artists' colony to work. The estate was built in 1899 by philanthropist Spencer Trask as a gift to his wife, Katrina. Although you can't visit the house, you can tour the grounds, which include a formal rose garden with fountains and an informal rock garden.