La Madeleine

La Madeleine tickets: which one to buy

The church is free to enter and there is no ticket of any kind. What is sold here is music: gospel, chamber and organ concerts are staged in the nave through the year by commercial promoters, and prices vary widely; the acoustics are resonant and suit choral programmes better than string quartets. The church is on Place de la Madeleine in the eighth arrondissement, on the metro at Madeleine, and needs no transport plan.

Walking tours of the Right Bank pass it and cost several times nothing. Nothing requires booking except concerts. The great organ, built by Aristide Cavaille-Coll in 1846 and played by Saint-Saens and Faure, is used for free recitals after some Sunday masses, which are the best musical value in the building. A crypt below the church holds a small chapel and a soup kitchen run by the parish, which is not part of any visit but explains the activity at the side door.

Visiting La Madeleine: what to see

Louis XV laid the first stone in 1763 for a church that would close the view up the Rue Royale, the Revolution stopped the work, and Napoleon ordered the half-built shell turned into a Temple of Glory for his armies. After his fall it reverted to a church and was finished in 1842, which is why it is a Greek temple with no bell tower, no cross on the roof and fifty-two Corinthian columns twenty metres high running right round the outside. The pediment carries a Last Judgment by Lemaire, added to make the building's purpose clear.

Inside there are no windows in the walls; light comes from three shallow domes, and the effect is a dim gilded hall with a fresco of the history of Christianity behind the altar and a marble Assumption by Marochetti rising above it. Chopin's funeral was held here in 1849, with Mozart's Requiem sung for the first time in Paris by women. Two enormous shells serving as holy water stoups were given by the republic of Venice, and the bronze doors carry the Ten Commandments in relief.

La Madeleine opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily from morning to evening with masses through the day; the church closes to visitors during services and for concert rehearsals, which are frequent. The interior is dark at any hour and photographs badly on a grey day; the domes work best in the middle of the day. The square outside holds Paris's most expensive food shops, Fauchon and Hediard among them, and a flower market. December brings a small Christmas market to the steps.

Dress modestly. Photography without flash is allowed. Allow twenty-five minutes. The Opera Garnier is five minutes north, the Place de la Concorde five minutes south down the Rue Royale, and the view from the top of the steps along that street to the obelisk is the reason the church sits where it does. The flower market on the east side of the square has been there since 1832 and is open every day except Sunday.