St. Louis Cathedral Basilica

St. Louis Cathedral Basilica tickets: which one to buy

The cathedral is free to enter and stands in the Central West End, a couple of miles from the downtown arch and easily reached on the light rail. What you pay for, if anything, is the mosaic museum in the lower level and a docent tour, both inexpensive. Take the tour if one is running: the mosaic programme took most of the twentieth century and was made by several generations of artists, and a guide makes sense of which parts belong to which campaign.

Architecture tours of St Louis pair the cathedral with the 1904 world's fair buildings in Forest Park, ten minutes away, and with the neighbourhood's private streets. Concert audiences come for the acoustics, which are exceptional under the dome, and the choral and organ schedule is published well ahead. Visiting during a service is possible but the aisles are closed off. This is a working parish, not a museum, and photography with a tripod needs asking.

Visiting St. Louis Cathedral Basilica: what to see

The exterior is Byzantine Revival in grey granite, with a wide central dome and two western towers, and it deliberately looks nothing like the Gothic churches most American dioceses were building in 1907. The interior is what people come for. Nearly every surface above the arcade is covered in mosaic, made from tens of millions of glass tesserae in thousands of colours and installed between 1912 and 1988; the total area runs to around eighty thousand square feet and is among the largest such installations anywhere.

The programme moves from the life of Saint Louis, the crusading French king the city is named for, through the history of Catholicism in the Mississippi valley, to the great dome with its scenes of judgement. Different decades are legible in the styles, from academic figures to flatter, more abstract work. Below, the crypt holds the tombs of the archbishops and a museum explaining how the mosaics were designed, cut and set. A separate chapel keeps the older altar furnishings.

St. Louis Cathedral Basilica opening hours and the best time to go

Bright daylight is essential, because the mosaics depend on reflected light and are dull on a grey afternoon. Late morning is the best window, with the sun high enough to reach the dome. Sunday mornings are busy with services and the building is not open for touring; weekday afternoons are almost empty. St Louis summers are hot and humid and the stone interior stays cool. The Christmas and Easter music programmes are the highlights of the concert calendar and fill the nave.

Forest Park, a short ride away, holds the art museum, the history museum and the zoo, all free, which makes a full day easy to assemble. The neighbourhood immediately around the cathedral has restaurants and a bookshop and is pleasant to walk. Allow forty-five minutes inside at minimum, and longer if you intend to work through the mosaic scheme properly with the museum first.