Cologne Cathedral

Cologne Cathedral tickets: which one to buy

The cathedral is free to enter and there is no ticket for the nave, which surprises visitors to Germany's most visited landmark. Three things are paid for separately and cheaply: the tower climb, the treasury and, on some days, the guided tour that goes behind the high altar. The tower is the one to take: 533 steps up a spiral staircase in the south tower, past the bell chamber with the 24-tonne St Peter's Bell, the largest free-swinging bell in the world, to a platform at 97 metres.

There is no lift and no way down except the same stairs, which are two-way and tight. Official guided tours in English run twice daily for a small fee and are far better than the commercial walking tours sold outside, which mostly circle the building without entering. Nothing needs booking. The cathedral asks for donations towards the permanent repair works, which have never stopped since 1880.

Visiting Cologne Cathedral: what to see

Building began in 1248 to house the relics of the Three Kings, brought from Milan in 1164, and stopped around 1560 with the choir finished and a crane standing on the half-built south tower, where it remained for three hundred years. Work resumed in the 1840s and the cathedral was completed to the medieval plan in 1880, at which point it was the tallest building in the world for four years. At 157 metres it is still the tallest twin-spired church anywhere.

Inside, the choir keeps its original fourteenth-century stalls, the largest in Germany, and the Shrine of the Three Kings behind the altar is a gilded reliquary the size of a small house, made around 1200. The Gerhard Richter window of 2007 in the south transept is 11,500 squares of coloured glass arranged by a computer, and remains controversial. Fourteen aerial bombs hit the building in the war and it stood while the city around it was flattened. Excavations beneath the floor, visited on a separate guided tour, expose the Roman and Merovingian churches that preceded it, including a sixth-century royal burial with a child's helmet and wooden staff.

Cologne Cathedral opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily from early morning to evening, with shorter hours in winter and closure to visitors during services, which are frequent. The tower keeps its own hours and closes in storms and ice. The cathedral square is a thoroughfare between the station and the old town, so there is no quiet hour outside; inside, the first hour after opening is calm. Light through the Richter window is best on bright mornings. The treasury is in the vaulted cellars on the north side.

Dress is not policed but the cathedral asks for quiet and stewards enforce it. Allow forty minutes inside, ninety with the tower, and note that the climb is hard work with a narrow section near the top. The station is directly beside the cathedral, which makes this the easiest major church in Europe to reach. The Christmas market fills the square in December and the cathedral is floodlit through the evening, which is when most photographs of it are taken.