Bremen Cathedral

Bremen Cathedral tickets: which one to buy

The cathedral stands on the market square, next to the town hall and the Roland statue that together carry the UNESCO listing, so you will pass it whatever else you do in Bremen. The church is free. Three add-ons are charged and sold inside: the tower climb, the museum in the crypts, and the lead cellar with its preserved bodies, which has its own entrance on the south side. The lead cellar is the oddity people remember and the one most likely to be closed out of season, so check it first if it matters.

Walking tours of the old town cover the square, the cathedral exterior and the Schnoor lanes, and the better ones continue to the Bottcherstrasse, a street of expressionist brick built in the 1920s that has no equivalent anywhere. Combined city cards give transport and museum discounts but nothing here. Organ recitals are frequent and inexpensive, and the instrument is a serious one.

Visiting Bremen Cathedral: what to see

Saint Peter's is a long Romanesque building with Gothic vaults, brick above and sandstone facing below, and it has been rebuilt often enough that reading the walls is half the interest. The two crypts at either end are the oldest visible parts, the eastern one keeping heavy eleventh-century columns with carved capitals. The western towers and much of the front were reconstructed between 1888 and 1901, when the crossing tower was added from scratch on the model of Worms.

Inside, the church has been Lutheran since the Reformation and is correspondingly restrained, with a fine carved pulpit and a Renaissance font. The museum displays medieval bishops' graves opened during twentieth-century excavation, with their vestments and croziers. The lead cellar holds eight naturally mummified bodies, among them a Swedish officer and a workman said to have fallen from the roof, dried rather than embalmed by the dry air and shown in open coffins since the eighteenth century. The south tower has 265 steps and a view over the Weser.

Bremen Cathedral opening hours and the best time to go

The tower and the lead cellar open roughly from April to October and close in winter, while the church itself is open all year. Market days fill the square, and the Christmas market in December wraps around the cathedral and turns the whole centre into a single crowd, handsome in the evening and impossible in the afternoon. The city festival on the Weser bank in August and the free market fair in late October are the other dates that change the mood of the centre.

Sunday morning service is well attended and visiting stops during it. The square is at its best photographically in the morning, when the sun is on the west front and the town hall together. Everything worth seeing in central Bremen is within fifteen minutes on foot, so the cathedral fits easily into a half-day that also takes in the Schnoor quarter, the statue of the town musicians and a walk along the river.