Cathedral of Our Lady

Cathedral of Our Lady tickets: which one to buy

The cathedral charges admission and is worth it, largely because of four paintings by Rubens that hang where they were meant to hang rather than in a gallery. Tickets are sold at the door and online, and an audio guide is included. The Antwerp city card covers entry along with the Rubens house and the museums, and pays for itself in a day of serious sightseeing.

Guided tours of the old centre take in the cathedral, the guild houses on the market square and the fortress by the river in about two hours. Art-focused tours build a day around Rubens, moving between the cathedral, his house and workshop, and the fine arts museum, which is the right way to understand him. The tower is not open for general climbing, though occasional guided ascents are organised and sell out at once. Carillon concerts are free and are listened to from the square below.

Visiting Cathedral of Our Lady: what to see

This is the largest Gothic church in the Low Countries, begun in 1352 and still unfinished: one tower reaches 123 metres and carries the bells, while its intended twin stops at the roofline, the money having run out in the sixteenth century. The finished tower is part of the UNESCO listing that covers the belfries of Belgium and France. Inside, seven aisles make the nave feel wider than it is tall, and the whitewashed walls are a legacy of the iconoclasm of 1566, when the medieval furnishings were destroyed.

What replaced them is the point. Rubens painted the Raising of the Cross and the Descent from the Cross for this building in the 1610s, and both hang in the transepts, with the Assumption above the high altar and the Resurrection nearby. The Descent is the one people come for. A nineteenth-century French children's novel set in Antwerp made these paintings famous in Japan, which is why a memorial to its hero stands outside.

Cathedral of Our Lady opening hours and the best time to go

The cathedral keeps shorter hours on Saturdays and opens only in the afternoon on Sundays, which catches out weekend visitors. Weekday mornings are calm and the north light on the Rubens paintings is at its best then. The building is also a working church and closes for services and concerts; the schedule is published. Antwerp's Christmas market fills the square and the streets around it through December and is one of the better ones in Belgium. The carillon plays on set days and can be heard across the centre.

Summer brings cruise passengers and the square gets crowded between eleven and three. Everything worth seeing in the old city is within fifteen minutes on foot, including the Plantin printing museum, which is the most underrated thing in Antwerp. Allow an hour inside the cathedral, more if you intend to sit with the paintings rather than pass them. Guided tours of the roof void and the bell chamber are announced a season ahead and are the only regular way up the tower.