Blue Church

Blue Church tickets: which one to buy

Entry is free but the church is open only for a short window each day, usually around the morning and evening masses, and locked the rest of the time; most visitors see it from outside. That makes the timing more important than any ticket. Walking tours of the Old Town include it and cost a moderate amount, though guides cannot get you in either.

The church is about ten minutes on foot east of the old centre on Bezrucova street, in a quiet residential quarter, so it needs a deliberate detour. Nothing is sold, there is no shop and no donation box at the door. Wedding parties book it heavily on Saturdays, which is the one day it may be open longer and also the day you are least likely to get inside. There is no ticket and no guided access, so the only cost is the walk or a short tram ride from the centre.

Visiting Blue Church: what to see

Odon Lechner, the great Hungarian Art Nouveau architect, designed the church between 1909 and 1913 for a girls' school next door, and it is the purest piece of Hungarian Secession in what is now Slovakia. Everything is blue: the plaster walls, the mosaics, the majolica trim and the glazed roof tiles, in a pale powdery shade with white detailing. The plan is an oval with a cylindrical tower 36.8 metres high beside it, and the mouldings curve like piped icing.

Lechner meant it as a national style built out of Hungarian folk ornament and Persian and Indian sources, and nothing about it looks like any other church in central Europe. The dedication is to Elizabeth of Hungary, who was born in Pressburg Castle above the town in 1207 and who gave away her husband's fortune to the poor; a mosaic above the door shows her doing it. The interior continues the scheme in pale blue with gold stencilling, a barrel vault instead of the dome Lechner first planned, and an altarpiece showing Elizabeth distributing bread.

Blue Church opening hours and the best time to go

Opening times are short and posted on the door, typically an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening around mass, with variations on Sundays and feast days; anyone who wants to see the interior should check locally the day before. The exterior is the main event for most visitors and can be photographed at any hour. Morning light falls on the front and evening light on the tower.

Bratislava is compact and the walk from the Old Town takes ten minutes past the Art Nouveau apartment blocks of the same period. There is no dress code and no photography restriction outside. Allow twenty minutes, an hour if you are waiting for the door to open. The surrounding streets hold several other Lechner-era buildings, including the grammar school he designed to match, which makes a short architectural walk.