Cathedral of St Mary Magdalene, Wroclaw

Cathedral of St Mary Magdalene, Wroclaw tickets: which one to buy

Entry to the church is by a small donation. The reason to pay anything more is the Penitents' Bridge, a narrow walkway strung between the two towers 45 metres above the street, reached by 247 steps and open for a modest ticket; it is one of the oldest such bridges in Europe and the view over the Old Town is the best in Wroclaw. Piano and organ concerts are held in the nave through the year and ticketed separately.

Guided walking tours of the Old Town include the church and cost several times any of this. The cathedral is two minutes from the market square and there is never a queue. It belongs to the Polish Catholic Church rather than the Roman Catholic one, which explains the unfamiliar name on the noticeboard. Concert tickets are sold at the door on the evening and cost little, and the programmes lean towards Chopin.

Visiting Cathedral of St Mary Magdalene, Wroclaw: what to see

A church stood here from the early thirteenth century, was destroyed in the Mongol invasion of 1241 and rebuilt in brick Gothic after a fire in 1342. In 1523 it became the first church in the city to hold Lutheran services, and it stayed Protestant for four centuries. The Romanesque doorway on the south side is older than the building: it was moved here in 1546 from the ruined abbey of Olbin and carved around 1160 with a tympanum of the Dormition of the Virgin, the finest Romanesque sculpture in Silesia.

The war left the church burnt out with one tower collapsed, and the rebuilding ran into the 1970s. On a ledge of one tower sits a small figure known as the penitent girl, tied to a local legend about a young woman condemned to walk the bridge until she repents. Baroque epitaph slabs line the interior walls, moved here from the old churchyard, and several carry portraits of Wroclaw merchants in ruffs.

Cathedral of St Mary Magdalene, Wroclaw opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily with shorter hours in winter and closure for services; the bridge keeps its own season, generally April to October and only in dry weather, since the walkway is open to the sky. The steps up are narrow and two-way. Wroclaw's Old Town is busy from May to September and around the Christmas market in December, which is one of the best in Poland. The brick interior is dim; the stained glass is post-war.

Dress modestly. Photography is allowed. Allow half an hour for the church, an hour with the bridge. The market square, the town hall and the university's baroque Aula Leopoldina are all within ten minutes, and the city's bronze dwarfs start appearing on the pavements just outside the door. The Panorama of Raclawice, a vast circular painting in its own rotunda, is ten minutes away and needs a timed ticket of its own.