NEW YORK — In a free-wheeling farewell press conference Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams and his top aides waxed nostalgic about his years in charge of the country’s largest city, reminiscing about all the good, bad and ugly that came with it.

“Unfiltered, perfectly imperfect, no telling what I’m going to do and what I’m going to say at any time — I am just Eric,” Adams, flanked by his deputy mayors and several agency commissioners, said in the City Hall Rotunda while reflecting on his legacy.

“And probably in the history of time as mayor, so many mayors want to be filtered, they want to pretend who they are and act like they are perfect. I am not.”

Adams is set to leave office Dec. 31 after a term that included achievements, but was also marred by corruption scandals.

The latter includes his own federal indictment, which hurled his administration into chaos last year. The feds’ case accused Adams of taking bribes and illegal campaign cash from Turkish government operatives in exchange for political favors, but it was quashed by President Trump’s Department of Justice, a dismissal that created its own set of controversies and led the mayor to drop his bid for reelection.

Throughout Tuesday’s 1½-hour press conference, Adams, the city’s second Black mayor, acknowledged there were ups and downs throughout his term.

But when all is said and done, Adams argued, history will be kind to him, pointing to drops in most index crimes, the adoption of a citywide housing rezoning plan, implementation of trash containerization efforts across the city and other achievements.

“When you look from the outside, you think that all our team may have done is frown, but no, we laughed a lot,” said Adams. “We leaned into the work,” he continued, “we knew what we were fighting for, we stood firm and we stood tall.”

Adams and his aides assembled a time capsule they filled with various memorabilia, including parts of an NYPD drone, the ID badge for a migrant who resided at the Roosevelt Hotel and a padlock to symbolize the administration’s crackdown on illegal cannabis stores.

First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, a Giuliani administration alum who came on board last spring after four of Adams’ top aides resigned amid fallout from his indictment, placed a speedometer set to 15 mph in the capsule, a nod to the administration’s successful push to lower the city’s permissible e-bike speed limit.

“That’s the kind of legacy, that’s the kind of innovation of this administration of which I am very proud,” Mastro said. “And I will say: As a second generation Italian-American, in closing, I paraphrase the immortal Frank Sinatra: We did it our way.”

After the press conference, Adams, Mastro and the other top staffers walked outside City Hall to bury the capsule in a hole dug in the sidewalk on Park Row. Adams declined to take questions after the event.

Adams has yet to disclose his next professional move. But he indicated Monday he’s likely to take a private sector job, and sources say he has been eyeing a job related to an Israeli construction firm. He was headed to Mexico later Tuesday.

Frank Carone, Adams’ first chief of staff who was instrumental in leading his 2021 campaign, said “every rational person agrees” the mayor’s administration was “the most successful in history,” citing how he “brought the city all the way back” from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“All this despite relentless bogus corruption claims, nonsense personal attacks. History will judge Eric Adams as a great mayor who is resilient and always focused on what he believed was in the best interest of NYC,” Carone told the Daily News.

Adams’ successor, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, is set to be sworn in as the city’s next mayor Jan. 1.

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