A day in New Haven: Art, bells and of course pizza
New Haven has lots of top-notch free attractions, from art museums to carillon concerts — though you will have to pay to try the city's famous pizza.
At 1111 Chapel St., the Yale University Art Gallery's collection includes Joseph Stella's kaleidoscopic "Brooklyn Bridge," Van Gogh's desolate "Night Cafe," a Yosemite landscape by Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Hart Benton's "Weighing Cotton," a 1939 depiction of African-American children and others in a field with bags of harvested cotton resembling bleached bones.
The Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., offers works going back centuries, from portraits and landscapes, including masterpieces by J.M.W. Turner, to exotic depictions of Britain's far-flung colonial empire.
Through Dec. 11, contemporary exhibitions include a show themed on Britain's colonial legacy by British Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare, who uses wax-printed fabric as a symbol of global trade and imperialism.
[...] on Chapel Street, The Study at Yale boutique hotel offers stylish accommodations.
Both art museums are housed in important modernist buildings by famed architect Louis Kahn with sleek glass and steel exteriors.
The gallery's lobby ceiling is composed of complex tetrahedron shapes, while the British museum galleries are suffused with natural light.
Both serve delicious thin-crust pizza made in coal-fired ovens, and both offer tomato pies as well as regular mozzarella cheese pizza (small pies, $9).
Other popular eateries include Claire's Corner Copia, a vegetarian cafe, 1000 Chapel St.; Union League Cafe, a French restaurant, 1032 Chapel St.; and Miya's Sushi, 68 Howe St., whose chef is a James Beard-award nominee.
Burgers are cooked medium-rare in antique cast-iron gas grills, served on white toast.