Valencia Cathedral

Valencia Cathedral tickets: which one to buy

The standard ticket covers the cathedral, the chapel of the Holy Chalice and the museum, and includes an audio guide; it is cheap and rarely needs booking. The Miguelete, the octagonal bell tower on the corner of the building, is a separate small ticket with its own entrance from the street and 207 spiral steps to a terrace over the old town. Guided tours cost several times the entry and are mostly built around the Holy Grail claim, which is the cathedral's headline.

Combined walking tours with the Lonja silk exchange and the central market make a good half day and usually include entry here. Free entry applies during services. If you are in the city on a Thursday, the Water Tribunal meets at noon at the Apostles' Door, a court of irrigation farmers that has sat in the open air for a thousand years and lasts about ten minutes. Combined tickets with the neighbouring basilica of the Virgen de los Desamparados are not sold, but that church is free and takes ten minutes.

Visiting Valencia Cathedral: what to see

The cathedral was begun in 1262 on the site of a mosque that had itself replaced a Visigothic church, and its long building history shows: a Romanesque door on one side, a Gothic one on another, a Baroque west front, and inside, Valencian Gothic under a later neoclassical skin that was stripped away in the 1970s. The chapel of the Holy Chalice holds an agate cup mounted in gold and pearls, dated by archaeologists to between the fourth century BC and the first century AD, which the Vatican has treated as the Grail with quiet seriousness;

two popes have celebrated mass with it. Behind the high altar are two panels by the Italian Renaissance painters Paolo da San Leocadio and Francesco Pagano, rediscovered in 2004 under eighteenth-century plaster. The museum holds Goya's two canvases of St Francis Borgia. The tower gives the best view in the city and an unusually close look at the cathedral's own roofs. The unfinished Miguelete was meant to carry a spire that was never built, which is why its top is a flat terrace rather than a point, and the bells are still rung by hand on feast days.

Valencia Cathedral opening hours and the best time to go

Open Monday to Saturday from mid-morning to early evening and on Sunday afternoons, with services taking priority. The Miguelete keeps its own hours, usually shorter, and the last climb is well before closing; the stairs are narrow, two-way and unlit in places. Valencia is mild in winter and very hot in July and August, when the tower is best done early. March brings Las Fallas, when the city fills, the cathedral square is used for the daily flower offering and access changes day to day.

Dress modestly. Photography without flash is allowed. Allow an hour for the cathedral and forty minutes for the tower. The Plaza de la Virgen outside, with its fountain and cafe tables, is the pleasant place to sit afterwards. Evening is the pleasant hour here: the square is lit, the cathedral's Baroque front takes the light well, and the horchata bars around the corner stay open late.