New Cathedral of Salamanca

New Cathedral of Salamanca tickets: which one to buy

One ticket covers both cathedrals, the old and the new, which share a wall and are entered through the same door; there is no cheaper single option and none is needed, because the Old Cathedral is the better building. A separate ticket, Ieronimus, opens the medieval towers and the walkways above the vaults, running through the upper galleries of both churches with views down into the naves and out over the town; it is the most interesting thing in Salamanca and takes about an hour.

Audio guides are included. Guided tours from Madrid pair Salamanca with Avila and give you three or four hours in the city, enough for the cathedrals and the Plaza Mayor. Nothing needs booking outside Easter. The university's historic buildings are a separate ticket a few minutes away. The Ieronimus ticket is sold at a separate window on the side of the building facing the river, not at the main cathedral desk.

Visiting New Cathedral of Salamanca: what to see

Salamanca decided in the fifteenth century that its Romanesque cathedral was too small and built a new one beside it between 1513 and 1733, keeping the old one open throughout and then deciding not to demolish it after all. The New Cathedral is late Gothic outside with Plateresque and baroque detail, and its bell tower rises 92 metres over a town of honey-coloured sandstone. The west front is carved to the density of embroidery. On one of the side doors, restorers in 1992 added an astronaut and a faun eating an ice cream among the foliage, a modern signature that visitors now hunt for.

Inside, the nave is enormous and light. The Old Cathedral next door, twelfth century, keeps a fifteenth-century altarpiece of fifty-three panels under a Last Judgment and a lantern tower known as the Torre del Gallo, ribbed like a melon and built by masons who had seen Byzantine domes. The dome over the crossing was rebuilt after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 cracked it, and the bell ringer who rode out the tremor in the tower is commemorated by a plaque.

New Cathedral of Salamanca opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily from mid-morning to early evening, with shorter hours in winter and closure during services. The Ieronimus tower route runs to its own timetable and is worth doing first, since it closes earlier. Salamanca is hot and dry in summer and cold in winter; the sandstone glows at sunset, which is when the Plaza Mayor and the cathedral front are at their best.

The city is full of students from September to June and full of tourists in July and August. Dress code is applied. Photography without flash is allowed. Allow two hours for both cathedrals, three with the towers. The Casa de las Conchas and the university facade with its hidden frog are both five minutes away. The city's two universities keep the bars open late, and the cathedral is floodlit until well after midnight.