Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral

Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral tickets: which one to buy

Entry is free. Guided tours run several times a day for a small fee, in Spanish and sometimes English, and cover the cathedral, the crypt and the mausoleum of San Martin; they are worth taking because the building says almost nothing about itself. A private tour with entry, sold by local operators, costs many times that and adds little. The cathedral stands on the Plaza de Mayo beside the government house, so every city walking tour passes it and most stop inside.

Nothing needs booking. The changing of the grenadier guard at the San Martin mausoleum happens at set times through the day and is free to watch. Jorge Bergoglio was archbishop here before becoming Pope Francis, and a small display in a side aisle covers his years in the building, which draws a steady stream of visitors. Tours start from a desk inside the main door and the times are chalked on a board rather than published online.

Visiting Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral: what to see

The site has held a church since Juan de Garay founded the city in 1580, and the present building is the sixth on it, finished in stages between 1752 and 1852. From outside it does not look like a church at all: twelve Corinthian columns carry a Greek portico with a carved tympanum showing Joseph meeting his brothers in Egypt, an image chosen after independence as a statement about national reconciliation. Inside, the nave is neoclassical, wide and calm, with a Venetian-style mosaic floor laid in 1907 and a rococo altarpiece.

The chief object is the mausoleum of Jose de San Martin, the liberator of Argentina, Chile and Peru, whose remains were brought back from France in 1880 and lie in a marble sarcophagus guarded day and night by soldiers in nineteenth-century uniform. An eternal flame burns outside for the unknown soldiers of independence. A side chapel holds a wooden Christ carved in the seventeenth century that survived the British invasions of 1806 and is carried in procession each Holy Week.

Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily from early morning to evening, with masses through the day and the tourist route pausing during them. The Plaza de Mayo is the political stage of Argentina and demonstrations are frequent, particularly on Thursday afternoons when the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo march; the cathedral stays open through them. Summer in Buenos Aires runs from December to February and is humid; the cathedral is cool. The building is floodlit at night.

Dress is informal but modest. Photography without flash is allowed. Allow forty minutes, an hour with a tour. The Casa Rosada next door offers free guided visits at weekends by advance booking, and the Cabildo museum on the far side of the square covers the colonial city. The tango halls of San Telmo and the bookshops of Avenida de Mayo are within a short walk, and the square is at its best in the early evening.