What Times Square actually is
Times Square is not a square — it's a bowtie-shaped pedestrian plaza where Broadway crosses 7th Avenue between roughly 42nd and 47th Streets, expanded by a 2009 decision to close Broadway to cars through the area. The "square" is technically the blocks where the two diagonal avenues create triangular intersections: the main one at 44th-45th, and Duffy Square at 47th, where the TKTS booth and the Father Duffy statue sit. The surrounding blocks — dense with theaters, LED signage, chain restaurants, and tourist infrastructure — are commonly included in what most people mean by "Times Square."
The billboard culture
Times Square's defining visual character — the layered, colour-cycling LED billboard wall — is not accidental. Buildings in the Times Square Special Sign District are legally required to maintain illuminated signage at a minimum square footage, meaning the commercial imperative and the visual character reinforce each other by law. The signs run 24 hours; the best time to experience the full effect is after dark and in wet weather, when the reflections on the wet pavement multiply everything. The largest individual signs cover multiple floors of full buildings; a few locations have been landmark signs for decades (the Coca-Cola corner has had continuous Coca-Cola signage since 1920).
The New Year's Eve ball drop
One million people watch the Times Square New Year's Eve ball drop in person each year — which requires being in position, standing in a pen, for several hours before midnight with no alcohol, no exits once you're in, and no guarantee of bathroom access. The event is genuinely spectacular as a piece of mass shared experience; it is also genuinely uncomfortable. If you're in New York for New Year's and want to mark the moment, watching from a bar or hotel with views in the area is a meaningfully better experience for most people. The ball drop is visible from a wide range of positions outside the main pen areas.
The Theater District
Broadway's main theater cluster sits on and around the side streets between 44th and 53rd Street, between 7th and 8th Avenues — close enough to Times Square that the two are inseparable in most visitors' mental geography, but the theater experience itself is distinct from the plaza experience. The theaters range from the large, ornate houses (the Majestic, the St. James, the Shubert) to smaller 500-seat venues used for new or limited-run productions. See our Broadway guide for booking strategy.
The TKTS booth
The TKTS discount ticket booth sits in the raised red-staircase structure at the north end of the main Times Square plaza (47th and Broadway). It sells same-day and next-day Broadway and Off-Broadway tickets at 20–50% discount. The board listing available shows updates continuously; the line typically takes 20–30 minutes to clear and moves faster than it looks. This is the most practical and reliable way to see a Broadway show without paying full box-office price, especially if you have flexibility about what you see. Opens at 3pm for evening shows, 10am for matinees.
Getting there and moving through
Times Square is served by an extraordinary number of subway lines — the 1/2/3, N/Q/R/W, A/C/E, and B/D/F/M trains all stop within a block or two. The pedestrian density in the plaza and on the surrounding sidewalks is at its most intense in the hours before and after Broadway shows (6–7:30pm and 10:30pm–midnight). If you're passing through rather than visiting intentionally, using the numbered side streets rather than the Broadway/7th Avenue corridor is noticeably faster.