St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney

St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney tickets: which one to buy

Entry is free, with a donation box and a small charge for the crypt, which is worth paying for its terrazzo mosaic floor showing the creation in a Celtic idiom. Volunteer-led guided tours run after the Sunday midday mass and on some weekdays at no cost. Audio guides are available through a phone app. Organ and choral concerts are ticketed separately; the cathedral choir is the oldest musical institution in Australia and sings at the main Sunday mass, which is free.

Wedding-themed tours advertised online are aimed at couples rather than visitors. The cathedral stands on College Street beside Hyde Park, five minutes from St James or Museum stations, so no transport is needed. Nothing requires booking. The cathedral bookshop beside the north door sells a good architectural guide and is open on the same hours as the church. Sunday mass at ten thirty is sung by the full choir and is the only time the building is used as it was designed to be.

Visiting St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney: what to see

The first St Mary's burned down in 1865 and William Wardell, an English Gothic Revival architect who had emigrated for his health, designed the replacement in local Sydney sandstone from 1866. It was built slowly, opened in 1928 and finished only in 2000, when the two southern spires were added to Wardell's original drawings using a crane rather than scaffolding. The result is the largest church in Australia and a thoroughly English building in a subtropical city: cruciform, 106 metres long, with a nave of warm honey-coloured stone and glass by Hardman of Birmingham.

The crypt underneath has a floor of terrazzo mosaic laid over fifteen years showing the days of creation and Celtic interlace, and is the most unexpected thing in the building. The cathedral holds the tomb of John Bede Polding, Australia's first Catholic archbishop. The rose window in the south transept, designed by Wardell and made in Birmingham, is the largest in Australia, and the bells were cast in Loughborough in 1986.

St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily from early morning to evening, with masses throughout the day and the tourist route pausing during them. Sydney's summer runs from December to February and the sandstone interior stays cool. The cathedral is floodlit at night and, in December, projections are shown on the west front as part of the city's Christmas programme, drawing large crowds to the forecourt.

The best light on the exterior is late afternoon from Hyde Park. Dress is informal but modest. Photography without flash is allowed. Allow forty minutes with the crypt. The Australian Museum is opposite, the Art Gallery of New South Wales is ten minutes through the park, and the Botanic Garden begins just north. Hyde Park's fig avenue leads directly to the west front and is the standard approach on foot from the city centre.