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Radio City Music Hall is a 1932 Art Deco landmark whose auditorium was the largest in the world when it opened, and a great New York theater you can explore without a show ticket. It runs a behind-the-scenes tour of the building, and at Christmas the hall becomes a spectacle of its own.
We at Travelmyth, the hotel search engine that ranks stays by your interests and needs across 60 stay categories, put this guide together for the traveler who wants more than a photo of the marquee. Here is what the tour includes, how the Christmas Spectacular works, what to notice in the architecture, and how to fold it into a Rockefeller Center visit. It is a companion to our wider guide to things to do in New York City.
You do not need a show ticket to see inside: Radio City runs the Radio City Music Hall Tour Experience, a roughly 60-minute guided tour that walks you through the history and the Art Deco beauty of the building, taking in the Grand Foyer, the Roxy Suite, the auditorium and the Great Stage, and including the chance to meet a Rockette.
The building's centerpiece is the Great Stage, a vast performance space measuring 66.5 by 144 feet, framed by Donald Deskey's Art Deco interiors. The tour is the best way to appreciate the hall if you are not in town for a show, and a genuine treat for anyone who loves theaters, architecture or old New York.
Radio City is the home of the Rockettes, and their Christmas Spectacular is a New York holiday institution. The show has been staged here since its first version in 1933; today it runs for about 90 minutes, with no intermission. It is seasonal, filling the hall through the late-year holidays, and popular slots sell out, so if a December visit is the plan, book early.
The two experiences are different in scale. A concert or the Christmas Spectacular puts you in the audience of an auditorium that seats 5,960, making it a genuinely grand setting for a performance. The behind-the-scenes tour, by contrast, is about the building itself rather than a performance. If you have the time and the interest, they complement each other; if you have to choose, pick the show for the spectacle and the tour for the architecture.
Radio City's Art Deco interior is one of its glories, and it repays a slow look. Donald Deskey's geometric designs run through the whole building, with glass, aluminum, chrome, bakelite and leather worked into the wall coverings, the carpet, the light fixtures and the furniture. Nicknamed "The Showplace of the Nation," the hall was built as a temple to popular entertainment, and the design still says exactly that.
Radio City sits at the edge of Rockefeller Center, so it slots easily into a wider Midtown afternoon. The complex consists of 19 buildings, including 14 original Art Deco buildings developed as part of John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s original project, and Top of the Rock, the observation deck atop 30 Rockefeller Plaza, is a few steps away. A tour of the hall, an hour at street level in the plaza, and a trip up the deck make an easy and walkable Midtown itinerary.
Midtown around Rockefeller Center puts Radio City, the plaza and the shops within a short walk. On Travelmyth you can filter New York stays by the features that matter to you, such as Skyscraper or Boutique-Style, and combine categories to narrow the long list to the stays that fit how you travel.