Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal

Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal tickets: which one to buy

A modest ticket covers self-guided entry with an audio guide, and a guided tour costs about twice that and lasts twenty minutes longer. Booking a slot online is worth it from June to October, when eleven million annual visitors compress into the warm months and the line on Place d'Armes runs along the facade. The other product is Aura, a sound and light show staged inside the basilica most evenings, projected onto the vaults and columns with an orchestral score;

it costs several times the day ticket, lasts about forty-five minutes and divides opinion, but the building takes projection remarkably well. Combined tickets with an Old Montreal walking tour or a river cruise are sold by local operators. Attending mass is free, and the basilica holds services in French and English. The Sacred Heart Chapel behind the main altar, rebuilt after a fire in 1978 with a huge bronze altarpiece, is included in the ticket and is easy to miss.

Visiting Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal: what to see

The Sulpicians, who effectively owned the island of Montreal until 1840, commissioned the basilica from James O'Donnell, an Irish-American Protestant architect who converted to Catholicism before his death so that he could be buried in the crypt. It was finished in 1829 and was the largest church in North America for half a century. The interior is Gothic Revival at its most theatrical, and none of it is stone: the vaults, the columns and the tracery are carved and painted wood.

The ceiling is deep blue scattered with gold stars, the reredos is a tier of polychrome carvings, and the light is the colour of old gold. The windows are unusual in showing the religious history of Montreal rather than biblical scenes. The Casavant Freres organ of 1891 has about 7,000 pipes and four manuals, and recitals are held through the year. Celine Dion was married here, which the guides mention without fail.

Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily from mid-morning to mid-afternoon on most days, with shorter Sunday hours because of services, and evening opening on Aura nights. The basilica is dim by design, so the season matters less than at most churches; the blue and gold read the same in January as in July. Montreal winters are severe and Old Montreal is quiet from November to March, which makes those the months to visit without a crowd. Summer weekends are the opposite.

Photography without flash is allowed, tripods are not, and the ticket desk asks visitors to remove hats. There is no dress code. Allow forty-five minutes, an hour with the chapel and the small museum space. Place d'Armes outside is a metro stop, and the cobbled streets of Old Montreal begin at the church door. The basilica's Christmas concerts sell out by early November and are the one time the building is used as the concert hall it acoustically is.