Sixteen acres of performing arts built on the cleared remains of the neighbourhood that West Side Story was filmed in. The plaza and the fountain are free.
What was here before
San Juan Hill was a dense, largely Black and Puerto Rican neighbourhood of about 7,000 families. Robert Moses had it condemned under urban renewal in the late 1950s and cleared. West Side Story was filmed in the emptied streets shortly before demolition, which is a grim piece of coincidence given what the film is about.
Lincoln Center opened through the 1960s as the first purpose-built performing arts campus in the United States, and the model was copied worldwide. Its architecture — three white travertine temples around a plaza — was criticised at the time for turning its back on the street, and the 2000s renovation spent a great deal of money opening it up.
What is in it
The Metropolitan Opera House, the big one at the back with the Chagall murals visible through the glass front. 3,800 seats and a stage machine of genuinely extraordinary scale.
David Geffen Hall, home of the New York Philharmonic, rebuilt from the inside out and reopened in 2022 after decades of acoustic complaints.
David H. Koch Theater, New York City Ballet and, in season, American Ballet Theatre.
Alice Tully Hall, chamber music and the New York Film Festival.
Vivian Beaumont and Mitzi Newhouse, the two Lincoln Center Theater houses. The Beaumont is a Broadway house, which is why plays that run here count as Broadway despite being sixty blocks north.
The Juilliard School is on the north side and puts on a large number of free or nearly free student recitals — the standard is very high and almost no visitor knows about them.
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts is free to enter and has exhibitions plus a listening and viewing archive.
Free and cheap
The plaza and the Revson Fountain are open and free, and the fountain does a choreographed show on the hour after dark. It is a nice place to be on a summer evening whether or not you have a ticket.
Summer for the City runs from June to August with free and low-cost outdoor concerts, a dance floor on the plaza, and silent discos.
Met Opera rush tickets go online at noon on weekdays for that night; standing room is sold at the box office from 10am on the day of performance and is the cheapest seat in serious opera anywhere.
Practical
Dress is whatever you like. Opening nights aside, the audience is ordinary.
Operas are long — four hours with two intervals is normal for Wagner — and start early, usually 7:30pm, for that reason.
More Theatre & Music
Broadway Theatre District
Forty-one theatres between 41st and 54th, only four of which are actually on Broadway. Here is how the tickets work and where the cheap ones are.
Carnegie Hall
Opened in 1891 with Tchaikovsky conducting, nearly demolished in 1960, and saved by a violinist. The acoustics are the reason it still matters.
Radio City Music Hall
The largest indoor theatre in the world when it opened in 1932, with a proscenium designed to look like a sunset and a stage that still works on 1930s hydraulics.