Archbasilica of St John Lateran

Archbasilica of St John Lateran tickets: which one to buy

The basilica is free to enter. Three neighbouring things are ticketed and cheap: the cloister, with its twisted inlaid columns of the thirteenth century; the baptistery, which is free but keeps its own hours; and the Scala Santa across the square, the staircase said to come from Pilate's palace, which pilgrims climb on their knees and which is free, with a paid museum attached. The Lateran Palace museum charges separately.

Guided tours of papal Rome include the basilica and cost several times any of this. The basilica is on the metro line A at San Giovanni, twenty minutes from the centre, and there is no queue, which is startling in a church of this rank. Photography without flash is allowed. The Lateran obelisk in the square outside is the oldest and tallest in Rome, brought from Karnak, and costs nothing to look at.

Visiting Archbasilica of St John Lateran: what to see

This, not St Peter's, is the cathedral of Rome and the seat of the pope as bishop of the city, and an inscription on the front calls it the mother and head of all churches in the world. Constantine founded it in 324, which makes it the oldest public church in Rome, and popes lived beside it for a thousand years before the move to Avignon and then to the Vatican. Fire, earthquake and rebuilding have left little of the original: Borromini remodelled the nave in the 1650s, encasing the ancient columns in piers with niches that hold twelve colossal apostles carved in the eighteenth century.

The Gothic baldachin over the high altar is said to contain the heads of Peter and Paul. The wooden altar table beneath it is claimed to be the one on which Peter celebrated. The apse mosaic, though restored, keeps its thirteenth-century design. A fragment of Giotto's fresco of Boniface VIII proclaiming the first jubilee of 1300 survives on a pier of the nave, cut down and reframed. The nave floor is Cosmatesque, laid in the twelfth century in porphyry and serpentine, and the wooden ceiling was gilded in the sixteenth.

Archbasilica of St John Lateran opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily from early morning to evening, closing at midday in some seasons and to visitors during services. The basilica is the site of the pope's Holy Thursday mass and of the Corpus Christi procession that walks to Santa Maria Maggiore. Rome is hot in summer and the nave stays cool. The cloister and baptistery both keep shorter hours than the church. Dress code is enforced, shoulders and knees covered.

Allow an hour with the cloister. The Holy Stairs opposite are climbed on the knees by thousands during Lent, and the ruins of the Aurelian wall and the Porta Asinaria are a two-minute walk, which makes this corner of Rome a coherent afternoon. The basilica is the parish church of the diocese and its Sunday liturgy is attended by Romans rather than visitors.