A Free Tour of the Rose Main Reading Room

The New York Public Library's Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Fifth Avenue is a working research library, and its grandest spaces are best seen with a docent. The free one-hour building tour covers the Beaux-Arts building's history, architecture and collections and ends up in the Rose Main Reading Room, where researchers still work at long wooden tables under painted ceilings and chandeliers. It is one of the great public rooms in the city, and it costs nothing to see.

Building tours run Monday through Saturday and are capped at 20 people; tickets are released online every Sunday for the week ahead. Short on time? A free 15-minute Rose Main Reading Room tour starts in the McGraw Rotunda on the third floor, with sign-up there 30 minutes beforehand, and the room also opens for a short visiting hour each morning except Sunday. Free tours of the Polonsky Exhibition of the library's treasures are another option. No food or drink, phones on silent, and no flash photography or photos of other people. The building closes on Sundays in July and August.