Basilica of Saint-Denis

Basilica of Saint-Denis tickets: which one to buy

Entry to the nave is free; the ticket is for the necropolis, the ambulatory and the crypt where the royal tombs stand, and it is modest. That is the whole point of a visit, so the free option is not really an option. Audio guides are included in some versions and guided tours run at set times. Saint-Denis is on metro line 13, twenty minutes from central Paris to Basilique de Saint-Denis station, and the basilica is two minutes from the exit.

Guided tours from Paris cost several times the ticket. The Paris Museum Pass covers entry. Nothing needs booking. A market fills the square outside on Tuesday, Friday and Sunday mornings and is one of the largest in the Paris region. Tickets are sold inside the west door and the Museum Pass queue is shorter than the ticket queue on weekends.

Visiting Basilica of Saint-Denis: what to see

Denis, the first bishop of Paris, was beheaded on Montmartre around 250 and, in the legend, walked here carrying his head. An abbey grew over the grave, and in the 1130s and 1140s Abbot Suger rebuilt the west front and then the choir, bringing together the pointed arch, the rib vault and the flying buttress with walls of coloured glass; the choir consecrated in 1144 is generally called the first Gothic building anywhere. Nearly every French monarch from the tenth century to the nineteenth was buried here, and the ambulatory and crypt hold about seventy recumbent effigies, from stiff medieval figures to the Renaissance tombs of Louis XII and Francis I.

Revolutionaries emptied the graves into pits in 1793; the monuments survived because Alexandre Lenoir had them removed to a museum, and they were returned in 1817. Suger's west front carried the first true rose window, and the ambulatory chapels behind the altar were designed so that the glass would be seen as a continuous band of light. Twelve original stained-glass panels from Suger's choir survive, the oldest Gothic glass anywhere, and the rest of the windows are nineteenth-century replacements.

Basilica of Saint-Denis opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily from morning to evening with shorter winter hours and closure on Sunday mornings for mass. The basilica is a cathedral and a working parish in a busy suburb. The north tower, demolished in 1846 after storm damage, is being rebuilt stone by stone in a public project with a visitor platform, which runs through the 2020s.

The glass reads best in the middle of the day. Photography without flash is allowed. Dress is informal. Allow ninety minutes. The Stade de France is a ten-minute walk and the Musee d'Art et d'Histoire in a former Carmelite convent is five. The tower reconstruction site can be visited on its own ticket and is worth a look for anyone interested in medieval building methods.