NEW YORK, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The St. Patrick's Day parade was held in New York city on Saturday with the color of green occupying avenues and streets in Manhattan, drawing people from all cultures.

Hundreds of thousands of people gathered alongside New York's Fifth Avenue to watch the St. Patrick's Day parade, which was made up of more than 100 marching bands, as the sounds of bagpipes and drums filled up the sunny sky of Manhattan.

St. Patrick's Day is a public holiday in Ireland and Northern Ireland. It's also widely celebrated by Irish communities around the world. The annual St. Patrick's Day parade is the festival's largest and most popular free event, drawing people from all cultures.

The parade included award-winning pipe and drum bands, Celtic musicians, Scottish and Irish dancers, acrobats, stilt walkers, vintage cars, among others. It was part of a weekend-long festival that celebrates the Celtic culture.

According to local media, during the six-hour parade, an estimated 150,000 marchers made a 1.4-mile (2.2-km) trek past several New York's main attractions, including Central Park, the Cathedral and Trump Tower.

U.S. media said Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who visited the White House on March 15, "watched the parade at St. Patrick's Cathedral before joining the march himself."