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Cathedrals · basilicas · monasteries · chapels

Every great church, and how to see it well

736 churches in 78 countries. For each one: what to look for inside, which ticket to buy, and when to go.

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All 736 churches →

Sistine Chapel

Rome, Italy

There is no ticket to the Sistine Chapel on its own. The chapel sits at the far end of the Vatican Museums, and every…

241 tickets & tours

Meteora

Meteora, Greece

Meteora is not one ticket but six. Each working monastery on the rock pillars charges its own small entrance fee at the…

165 tickets & tours

St Peter’s Basilica

Rome, Italy

Entry to the basilica itself is free, which surprises many visitors, so what you pay for is either speed or access to…

154 tickets & tours

Sagrada Familia

Barcelona, Spain

Every ticket here is timed and almost every one sells out days ahead, so booking is not optional.

125 tickets & tours

Geghard Monastery

Garni, Armenia

Entry is free, as at most Armenian monasteries, so the only thing you pay for is getting there.

89 tickets & tours

St Mark’s Basilica

Venice, Italy

Entry to the basilica costs a few euros and the queue along the arcade can take an hour in season, which makes the…

69 tickets & tours

Batalha Monastery

Batalha, Portugal

A single ticket covers the whole site, and it is cheap; the church itself is free, so paying gets you the cloisters,…

68 tickets & tours

Florence Cathedral

Florence, Italy

The cathedral nave is free to enter, and the queue for it moves steadily along the north side of the building.

67 tickets & tours

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What this site is

A great church rewards the visitor who knows what to look for. The same city has a cathedral with a queue, a basilica with a dome to climb and a monastery almost nobody visits, and the official sites describe each one in the same words. We write the part they leave out: which of them shows what you came for, which ticket or tour is the sensible one, and which hour avoids the crowds and the services.

Every page is written by hand from the object's own facts and the tickets actually on sale. Where a ticket or a tour can be booked online, the live calendar is on the page; where nothing is sold, we say so and point to the nearest church that does. Bookings go through GetYourGuide, and the links earn us a commission at no cost to you.