Basilica of Saint-Sernin, Toulouse vs Church of the Jacobins
Two churches in Toulouse. Basilica of Saint-Sernin, Toulouse has no online ticket listed; Church of the Jacobins has no online ticket listed. The table and the two notes below put them side by side; the full pages have what to see, the ticket and the timing for each.
Saint-Sernin is free to walk into and stands ten minutes north of the main square of Toulouse, so the decision is only whether to take a guide and whether to pay the small charge for the crypt. Take both. The crypt holds the relic collection that made the church what it is, and without someone explaining the pilgrimage economy of the eleventh century the building reads as merely very large. Walking tours of the pink city pair it with the Jacobins church, which is the other essential stop and a complete contrast in materials and mood.
The Jacobins is ticketed, cheaply, and the ticket covers the church and the cloister; the chapter house and the chapel of Saint Antonin are usually included when open. Buy at the door. This is the one building in Toulouse that repays a slow visit, and the city knows it: deckchairs are put out in the nave in summer so that people can sit and look up, which is not a gimmick but the only comfortable way to see the vault.
