Radio City Music Hall Tour

Radio City Music Hall opened in December 1932, in the depths of the Depression, as the centerpiece of Rockefeller Center and the largest indoor theater in the world, and it still looks like the future as imagined in the thirties. The interiors by Donald Deskey are one of the great American Art Deco achievements: a vast foyer under a chandelier, gold-and-black detailing, mirrors, murals and a sunburst proscenium arch that frames the Great Stage like the rising sun. The tour takes you through the lobby, up the grand staircases and into the auditorium, where the seats climb in a series of arcs and nearly six thousand people can sit under a ceiling that glows in changing color. Guides tell the story of the building - the vision of showman Samuel "Roxy" Rothafel, the decision to keep the hall afloat as a movie-and-stage palace, the near-demolition scare of the 1970s and the landmark designation that saved it - and of the Rockettes, the precision dance company that has kicked in unison on this stage since the hall opened. On many tours you meet a Radio City Rockette and hear what the job demands, and you learn how the stage machinery, including its hydraulic lifts and the Mighty Wurlitzer organ, works.

The Great Stage is the reason the hall exists. It is some sixty feet deep and well over a hundred feet wide, built with sections that rise and lower on hydraulic elevators - technology so advanced when it was installed that the Navy is said to have borrowed ideas from it for aircraft carriers. A curtain of gold, a proscenium that doubles as a lighting instrument and an organ whose pipes sit in chambers on either side of the stage give the room its unmistakable character.

Even if you never see a show here, standing at the front of the orchestra and looking up into the layered ceiling is one of the best architecture moments in Midtown, and the tour gives you time to take it in without a crowd around you.

The hall is more than the Christmas spectacular, though that is its busiest season. Throughout the year it hosts concerts, comedy, awards, film premieres and special engagements, and the tour fits around that schedule, so the exact route and what you can see can vary by day. Rockefeller Center itself is a short walk in every direction: Top of the Rock, the Rink, Saint Patrick's Cathedral, Fifth Avenue and the NBC Studios are all within a few blocks, which makes the tour an easy first stop in a Midtown day.

For anyone who already has tickets to a show here, a daytime tour is a good way to learn the layout before the evening.

Combine the tour with the Rink or Top of the Rock if you want a full Rockefeller Center day, or with a Broadway show at night to make the whole trip theatrical.