Bamberg Cathedral

Bamberg Cathedral tickets: which one to buy

The cathedral is free to enter with a donation box inside. Guided tours in German run several times a day for a small fee and are the only way into the crypt; English tours must be booked in advance through the cathedral office. The Diocesan Museum in the cloister charges its own modest ticket and holds the imperial vestments, including the blue starred mantle of Henry II, which is the best textile collection of its date in Europe.

A combined ticket with the New Residence next door saves a little. Bamberg is a UNESCO town and walking tours include the cathedral and cost several times any of this. The cathedral sits at the top of the old town, a ten-minute uphill walk from the station side, and there is no queue at any season. The cathedral office sells a detailed English guidebook that covers the sculpture programme, which the free leaflet does not.

Visiting Bamberg Cathedral: what to see

Henry II founded the cathedral in 1002 and it was consecrated in 1012; the present late Romanesque building with four towers went up in the thirteenth century after two fires. Two things make it unusual. It has two choirs, one at each end, a German arrangement that leaves the nave without a clear focus and gives the building its curious symmetry. And it holds tombs of the first rank: the marble monument of Henry II and his wife Cunigunde, carved by Tilman Riemenschneider between 1499 and 1513 with scenes from their lives, and the only papal grave north of the Alps, that of Clement II.

Against a pier in the east choir stands the Bamberg Horseman, a life-size equestrian statue of about 1235 by an unknown sculptor, the first free-standing rider carved in Europe since antiquity, whose identity has been argued over for two centuries. The Adam Portal on the south side carried the first life-size nude statues in German sculpture, and the originals now stand in the diocesan museum.

Bamberg Cathedral opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily from morning to evening with shorter hours from November to March, closing to visitors during services. Bamberg is busy in summer and at its Christmas market, and quiet the rest of the year. The interior is unheated and cold in winter. The Horseman stands in the east choir and is lit from the south, which reads best in the middle of the day. Dress modestly. Photography without flash is allowed. Allow forty minutes, an hour with the museum.

The Old Town Hall built on a bridge in the middle of the river, the Little Venice fishermen's houses and nine working breweries are all within twenty minutes, and the smoked beer at Schlenkerla is the local institution. The cathedral square is enclosed by the New Residence, the Old Court and the canons' houses, and is one of the best preserved in Germany. Bamberg was spared wartime bombing almost entirely, which is why the whole old town rather than a single street survives.