Cologne Cathedral to announce entrance fees

Cologne Cathedral's chapter will announce on Tuesday how much visitors will have to pay to enter the landmark. One argument for introducing an entrance fee is that other famous cathedrals have long charged admission, a point that holds some truth.

For example, an adult ticket for St. Paul's Cathedral in London costs 27 pounds (31 euros), and Westminster Abbey charges 31 pounds (35 euros). A standard ticket for the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona requires 26 euros.

However, there are prominent counterexamples. Visiting Notre Dame in Paris is free, despite its hundreds of millions of euros in restoration costs after the devastating 2019 fire. St. Peter's Basilica in Rome also offers free admission.

Critics of an entrance fee also argue that Cologne cannot be compared to international tourist metropolises like London. Many visitors are locals or regional residents, or travelers passing through the adjacent main train station, who have often spontaneously visited the cathedral. Such spontaneous visits would now be a thing of the past. Other famous German churches, including Hamburg's St. Michael's Church and Munich's Frauenkirche, can also be visited for free.