Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey tickets: which one to buy

The standard ticket includes a multimedia guide narrated by Jeremy Irons and covers the church, the royal tombs, Poets' Corner and the cloisters; booking online saves both money and the queue on Broad Sanctuary. Verger-led tours, about ninety minutes with a member of the abbey staff, cost extra and go into the shrine of Edward the Confessor, which is otherwise closed; they are limited to small numbers and sell out first.

The Queen's Diamond Jubilee Galleries in the medieval triforium are a separate small charge and reached by a tower lift: 16 metres up, looking down the length of the nave, with the abbey's own treasures, including funeral effigies and the Liber Regalis. Combination tickets with the Tower of London or a Thames cruise rarely save much. The one free option is worth knowing: attending a service costs nothing, and Evensong on weekday afternoons puts you in the quire with the choir, though you cannot tour the building afterwards.

Visiting Westminster Abbey: what to see

A Benedictine abbey stood here by the tenth century; Edward the Confessor rebuilt it and was buried here in 1066, and Henry III began the present Gothic church in 1245 to house his shrine. Every coronation since 1066 has taken place in this building, on the Coronation Chair that stands near the west end, a plain oak throne of 1300 with centuries of graffiti carved into it by choirboys and visitors. Sixteen royal weddings have been held here, and more than 3,300 people are buried or commemorated inside, which makes the floor a map of British history.

Poets' Corner gathers Chaucer, Dickens, Hardy and memorials to dozens more. Scientists cluster near the quire screen, where Newton's monument faces Darwin's grave and Stephen Hawking's ashes lie between them. At the east end, the Henry VII Lady Chapel has a fan vault of carved stone pendants that is the finest of its kind anywhere. The Unknown Warrior lies just inside the west door, the one grave in the abbey no one walks on.

Westminster Abbey opening hours and the best time to go

The abbey is open to visitors Monday to Saturday and closed to sightseeing on Sundays, when it functions purely as a church. Last admission is in the mid-afternoon and the building empties fast after that, so the final hour is quiet. The first slot in the morning is the other good window; mid-morning to early afternoon is congested, especially in summer and around state occasions, which close the abbey entirely.

Allow ninety minutes at a brisk pace and two and a half hours to do it properly. Photography is permitted in most of the church but not in the Lady Chapel or during services. The cloisters and the College Garden, one of the oldest cultivated gardens in England, are free to enter through Dean's Yard on weekdays and are a pleasant way to see part of the abbey without a ticket. Evensong is sung at 5pm on most weekdays and 3pm on Sundays, and there is no charge.