Toledo Cathedral

Toledo Cathedral tickets: which one to buy

The standard ticket covers the cathedral, the sacristy with its El Grecos, the treasury and the chapter house, and it includes an audio guide in most versions, which is necessary because the building is a maze of chapels with almost no labels. A slightly dearer ticket adds the bell tower, visited in small timed groups. The city sells a monument bracelet covering seven sites, including the cathedral, the Santo Tome church with El Greco's Burial of the Count of Orgaz, the synagogues and the mosque;

it costs about the same as three separate entries and is the standard buy for a day in Toledo. Guided tours cost two to three times the ticket. Day trips from Madrid, an hour away by train or coach, typically bundle the bracelet with a walking tour; check whether cathedral entry is actually included or only pointed at from outside, a common gap in cheap tours. Free entry for prayer is available at a side door in the early morning.

Visiting Toledo Cathedral: what to see

Begun in 1226 on the site of the city's main mosque, the cathedral took 250 years to finish and is the heavyweight of Spanish Gothic: five naves, 88 pillars, 750 stained-glass windows made between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. Three things stop every visitor. The high altarpiece is a wall of polychrome wood, rising in tiers to a Calvary near the vault. Behind it, cut through the ambulatory wall in 1732, is the Transparente, a baroque explosion of marble, bronze and painted cloud lit by a hole knocked through the roof so that a shaft of sun strikes it each day.

And in the sacristy hangs El Greco's Disrobing of Christ, painted for this room, with fifteen more of his works around it plus Goya, Titian and Van Dyck. The Mozarabic chapel still celebrates the pre-Roman Hispanic rite. The cloister, the choir stalls carved with the conquest of Granada and the monstrance of gold and silver two and a half metres high complete the picture.

Toledo Cathedral opening hours and the best time to go

Opening is mid-morning, with closing in the early evening and a shorter schedule on Sundays, when the morning belongs to services. The Transparente is lit by the sun through its roof opening around the middle of the day, which is the moment to be in the ambulatory. Toledo bakes in summer, over 35 degrees for weeks, and the cathedral is one of the few cool places in town;

arrive at opening to have it half empty. Day trippers from Madrid arrive around eleven and leave by five, so the early evening is quiet in the whole city. Dress code is enforced at the door, shoulders and knees covered. Large bags are refused. Allow ninety minutes inside, more if the audio guide catches you, and give the tower its own slot since the climb is 100 steps and the groups are small.