Basilica of Our Lady of Altagracia

Basilica of Our Lady of Altagracia tickets: which one to buy

Entry is free and there is no ticket office; the basilica lives on offerings and on the stalls of candles and rosaries around the square. The building stands in Higuey, about 45 minutes inland from Punta Cana and Bavaro, so what you are really choosing is how to get there. Local guaguas run from Punta Cana for a couple of dollars and drop you in the centre, a short walk from the basilica.

Organised cultural tours from the resorts cost a moderate amount and combine the church with the Higuey market, a rum or cigar stop and sometimes a visit to a local family home; they take half a day and include the transport, which is the only real expense. Tours from Santo Domingo take much longer and usually treat Higuey as one stop among several. Taxis from the resort strip are expensive and worth sharing. There is no dress code enforced at the door and no photography fee.

Visiting Basilica of Our Lady of Altagracia: what to see

The basilica was consecrated in 1971 and is unlike any other church in the Caribbean. The French architects Pierre Dupre and Andre Dunoyer de Segonzac won the competition with a design of raw concrete: a single soaring arch 75 metres high, repeated in diminishing rings down the length of the building, so that the whole church reads as one gesture rather than a set of walls. Bronze doors by Rodin's pupil face the plaza.

Inside, the concrete is left bare and the light comes through slotted windows in bands of colour. Above the altar hangs the sixteenth-century painting of Our Lady of Altagracia, the patroness of the Dominican Republic, brought here in 1970 and framed in gold and jewels donated by pilgrims; it is the object of the whole building. The image appears on the fifty-peso note, and more than 800,000 people come to see it each year, a number that has little to do with tourism.

Basilica of Our Lady of Altagracia opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily from early morning to evening, with masses through the day and no closure for visitors except during the largest services. The 21st of January is the feast of Our Lady of Altagracia and a national holiday, when tens of thousands of pilgrims arrive, many walking through the night from surrounding towns; the church is impossible to visit normally but the atmosphere is the strongest of the year. Ordinary weekday mornings are calm and almost empty.

Higuey is hot and humid year-round, and the concrete interior stays surprisingly cool. Hurricane season runs from June to November and affects the drive more than the visit. Dress is informal, as everywhere in the Dominican Republic, though pilgrims dress carefully. Allow half an hour inside and an hour for the square and the market streets behind it, which are the real town. Higuey is the oldest continuously inhabited Spanish town in the interior of the island, and the ruined sixteenth-century church nearby is worth ten minutes.