Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin tickets: which one to buy

The ticket covers the cathedral and the crypt, and a combined version adds Dublinia, the Viking and medieval museum reached by the covered bridge across the street; the combination is the usual buy for families. Booking online saves a little. Free guided tours are included at set times through the day and are led by volunteers who know the building well. Attending a service costs nothing, and the cathedral choir, which sang at the first performance of Handel's Messiah in 1742, sings Evensong several days a week.

Belfry tours, in which visitors ring the bells under supervision, run at fixed times for an extra fee and are unusual enough to be worth planning around. Dublin city passes include entry. The cathedral is in the medieval core, ten minutes from Temple Bar, and queues are short. The cathedral shop sells the combined Dublinia ticket at the same price as the museum does, so buy at whichever door you reach first.

Visiting Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin: what to see

Sitric Silkenbeard, the Hiberno-Norse king of Dublin, founded a church here around 1030; Strongbow rebuilt it in stone after the Norman invasion and was buried in the nave, where a tomb effigy said to be his still lies. The building was enlarged in the early thirteenth century with stone and masons brought from Somerset, which is why it looks more English than Irish. A partial collapse in 1562 brought down the south wall and the nave vault, and the Victorian restoration paid for by the whiskey distiller Henry Roe gave the cathedral its present form, including the covered bridge.

The crypt below is the largest in Britain or Ireland, running the full length of the building, and holds a strange collection: stocks from the old church court, a tabernacle from the brief Catholic restoration under James II, and the mummified bodies of a cat and a rat found inside an organ pipe, known to Dubliners as Tom and Jerry. The nave leans visibly northwards, a result of the 1562 collapse, and the Victorian restorers chose to keep the tilt rather than straighten it.

Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily with shorter Sunday hours and closure to visitors during services. Last admission is three quarters of an hour before closing. Dublin's tourist season runs from May to September, and the cathedral is busiest in the middle of the day, though it never reaches the crush of the bigger English cathedrals. The crypt is dry and cool. Winter evenings, when the cathedral is lit and the choir is singing, are the best time to be inside.

Photography without flash is allowed. There is no dress code. Allow an hour, ninety minutes with Dublinia. St Patrick's Cathedral, the other medieval cathedral, is a ten-minute walk south and charges its own ticket; the two are usually seen on the same morning. The bells are rung on Sunday mornings and for practice on Friday evenings, and the sound carries across the whole medieval quarter.