Free things to do in Brooklyn
The bridge, the park under it, Prospect Park and its free summer concerts, a beach at the end of the subway, a street-art district, a cemetery with wild parrots, and the Botanic Garden's free windows — eight free things and the conditions on a ninth.
Brooklyn has more free things worth doing than any borough except Manhattan, and they are better distributed: a cluster on the waterfront under the bridges, a cluster around Prospect Park, a beach at the far end, and a few streets in between. The famous paid things are the Botanic Garden and the Museum, and both have honest free or reduced windows that are worth planning around.
The waterfront cluster — the bridge walk, DUMBO and Brooklyn Bridge Park — is one continuous free morning on foot from Manhattan. The Prospect Park cluster is one subway ride from there. Those two together are the one-day Brooklyn itinerary on this site; this page is the list it was built from, plus the things that didn't fit into a day.
Everything on the list is on the 2, 3, A, C, F, L, R or the Coney Island lines — Brooklyn is the best-connected borough after Manhattan.
The list
Walking the Brooklyn BridgeFree
DUMBO / Civic Center · Brooklyn
Free, thirty minutes, and the best hour of a first visit to the city if you start on the Manhattan side before nine. Stay in the pedestrian lane and step aside to take pictures. Come off on the Brooklyn side and walk straight down into the next two things.
Brooklyn Bridge ParkFree
DUMBO / Brooklyn Heights · Brooklyn
Eighty-five acres on six former piers under the bridges, with the skyline view everyone comes to Brooklyn for and free programming all summer — films, kayaking, concerts. The carousel and boat hire charge; the lawns, the pebble beach and the view do not.
DUMBOFree
DUMBO · Brooklyn
Cobblestones, nineteenth-century warehouses and the Manhattan Bridge framed between them — the most photographed view in Brooklyn, free to walk, and a compact half-day that costs nothing unless you eat. Better on the side streets than at the one corner everyone is standing on.
Prospect ParkFree
Park Slope / Prospect Heights / Flatbush · Brooklyn
Five hundred and twenty-six acres, Brooklyn's only forest, a ninety-acre meadow, and a free concert season at the bandshell all summer long — the one thing here that can fill an evening for nothing. The zoo and the carousel charge; nothing else in the park does.
Coney IslandFree
Coney Island · Brooklyn
A free public beach, a two-and-a-half-mile boardwalk, and free fireworks on summer Friday nights, at the end of the D, F, N and Q for one fare. The rides are ticketed individually; walk, swim and watch the Cyclone from outside for free.
Green-Wood CemeteryFree
Greenwood Heights / Sunset Park · Brooklyn
Free to enter and walk, and the best Victorian landscape in the borough: hills, ponds, monuments, mature trees, and the harbor visible from the high ground. Nineteenth-century New Yorkers came here by the thousand for the views before there were parks to go to; now it is quiet, and the wild parrots at the gate are the welcome. The R to 25th Street.
The Bushwick CollectiveFree
Bushwick · Brooklyn
A few blocks of industrial Bushwick turned into an open-air street-art district, curated since 2012, free to walk and repainted often enough that it is different every year. Guided tours exist and are unnecessary: the L to Jefferson Street and wander.
WilliamsburgFree
Williamsburg · Brooklyn
The waterfront parks with the straight-on Manhattan view are free, and so is walking Bedford Avenue, which is the whole point of the neighborhood. One stop from Manhattan on the L. Everything you might buy here is neighborhood-priced, which is not cheap — so don't.
Brooklyn Botanic GardenUnder $25
Prospect Heights / Crown Heights · Brooklyn
Ticketed, but with free or reduced windows on set weekday mornings and in the winter off-season, and the schedule changes — check the spot page before you go. If you land in a free window, the Japanese garden from 1915 and the cherries in April cost nothing and sit next door to the Museum.
Common questions
- Is the Brooklyn Museum free?
Not exactly. General admission is ticketed with a suggested-contribution option, which in practice means you can pay less than the posted price at the desk, and special exhibitions cost extra. A free monthly evening has run in the past and comes and goes — check the spot page. It is the second-largest art museum in the city with a fraction of the Met's crowd, and it is worth paying for if you have to.
- What's free in Brooklyn in winter?
The bridge, the waterfront park and DUMBO are free and fine in the cold and far less crowded; the Botanic Garden's winter off-season is when its free admission is widest; Green-Wood and Prospect Park are good walks in any weather. The beach and the concerts are summer things. The Williamsburg waterfront view is, if anything, clearer.
- Is this walkable without the subway?
The waterfront three — bridge, DUMBO, the park — are one continuous walk from Manhattan and need no train at all. Prospect Park, the garden and Green-Wood are a second cluster, fifteen minutes' walk apart from each other, one subway ride from the first. Coney Island, Bushwick and Williamsburg are each their own trip on their own line.
Who should skip this
Anyone who came to Brooklyn to shop, eat and drink — all three are good here and none of them are free, and this page is about the things that are.