St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin

St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin tickets: which one to buy

A moderate ticket covers the cathedral and includes a leaflet guide; booking online saves the queue at busy times. Free guided tours are included at several points through the day and are worth timing your arrival around. Attending a service costs nothing, and the choir, founded in 1432 and the one that sang at the premiere of Handel's Messiah, sings Evensong on most weekdays in term; it is the best free thing in Dublin.

Combined tickets with Christ Church, ten minutes away, are not sold, so budget for two entries if you want both. City tours include the cathedral and cost several times the ticket. The park beside it, laid out on the slum cleared in the nineteenth century by the Guinness family, is free and pleasant. Dublin passes include entry. The gift shop sells a joint guidebook to both Dublin cathedrals, which is cheaper than two separate ones and explains why the city has two.

Visiting St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin: what to see

The cathedral was founded in 1191 beside the well where Patrick is said to have baptised converts, and rebuilt in the early Gothic style from 1220; at 91 metres it is the longest church in Ireland. It is not the seat of a bishop, which is unusual: Christ Church holds that role, and St Patrick's has been the national cathedral of the Church of Ireland since 1870. Jonathan Swift was dean here from 1713 to 1745, and his grave, his epitaph about savage indignation and his pulpit are all in the nave;

his companion Stella lies beside him. The Boyle monument, a four-storey painted family group of 1632, dominates one corner. A medieval door with a hole hacked through it hangs on the wall, cut in 1492 so that two feuding earls could shake hands through it, which is where the phrase about chancing your arm comes from. Military colours hang from the walls, faded to threads, and a Celtic cross on the floor marks the site of the well where the church began.

St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily with shorter hours on Sundays and closure to visitors during services; last admission is half an hour before closing. Dublin's tourist season is May to September, and the cathedral is busiest in the middle of the day. Evensong is usually at five fifteen on weekdays and is free; arrive ten minutes early. The building is cold in winter. Photography without flash is allowed. There is no dress code.

Allow an hour, ninety minutes if a tour or a service catches you. Marsh's Library next door, opened in 1707 and unchanged since, still has the cages in which readers were locked with rare books; it charges a small fee and is one of the least visited good things in the city. St Patrick's Day on 17 March fills the cathedral and the park outside, and the choral service that morning is broadcast nationally.