Santiago de Compostela Cathedral: the free church, the Pórtico de la Gloria, the roofs and the museum

The short answer

You do not need a ticket to go into Santiago de Compostela Cathedral as a church. The cathedral's visits page says access to the cathedral and the Apostle's tomb is free, through the Puerta de Platerías, that backpacks are not allowed for security reasons, and that there are no visits during services.[1]

What you do book is everything else. The Pórtico de la Gloria, the guided walk over the roofs to the Torre de la Carraca, the Cathedral Museum and the night visits are separate tickets sold on visitas.catedraldesantiago.es, the cathedral's own ticket site, and the ticket site says the Pórtico, roof and night visits must be joined at the time printed on the ticket.[3] The decision is which of those you want, and whether the free Pórtico visit is enough.

Who runs what

The building is a working cathedral. Its liturgy page describes the cathedral chapter as the custodian of the Apostle's relics.[13] The visits are organised around the Museo Catedral, whose tickets, the museum says, give access to several spaces and collections of the cathedral. The Fundación Catedral de Santiago, constituted in 2008 with a board chaired by the Archbishop, promotes the Compostela Sacra programme, under which the ticket site sells the Colexiata de Sar museum, the Diocesan Museum and the combined visit with San Martín Pinario.[3][12][11]

The cathedral's own pages link to its ticket site, visitas.catedraldesantiago.es, which carries the cathedral's copyright line.[3][1]

The visits the cathedral sells

The Pórtico de la Gloria. This is the western entrance of the Romanesque cathedral, made by Maestro Mateo; the cathedral dates the inscription on its lintels to 1 April 1188. It was restored between 2008 and 2018, and the cathedral explains that its conservation needs stable humidity and temperature and a limit on how many people stand near it at once, which is why visits are in small groups. The cathedral's Pórtico page says the paid Museo Catedral-Pórtico ticket includes the complete museum visit and the Pórtico with an audio guide.[2]

There is also a free Pórtico visit with an audio guide, booked as an invitation at a fixed time; its page allows a maximum of two invitations per person and says invitations cannot be refunded or changed.[4] The paid complete-visit page adds that the Pórtico cannot be visited during liturgical celebrations.[6]

The roofs. The roof ticket is a guided walk that climbs 140 steps up the tower's internal stairs, crosses the cathedral's stepped stone roofs and ends on the Torre de la Carraca, with separate Spanish and English sessions. Its page says there is no wheelchair access to the roofs. The same ticket also includes the museum's permanent collection, the Pazo de Xelmírez, the crypt of the Pórtico, the Colexiata de Sar museum and the Diocesan Museum; the page says the first four can be visited on the day or in the following seven days.[5]

The museum. The Pazo de Xelmírez, which the cathedral's plans describe as a Romanesque civil building attached to the cathedral, is part of the museum route, with the cloister, the treasury and the Chapel of Relics.[1] The museum has three ticket offices: on Praza do Obradoiro, in the Pazo de Xelmírez, where the themed visits start, and in the Treasury inside the cathedral, which takes cards only.[9]

Night and combined visits. The night visit is guided inside the cathedral, including the Pórtico and its tribune and the Capilla Mayor, and is guided in Spanish except for sessions marked as English.[7] The Catedral + San Martín Pinario visit adds a guided visit to the Diocesan Museum and the San Martín Pinario complex, again with separate Spanish and English sessions.[8]

What to bring, and what not

The cathedral's pages do not set one bag rule. The visits page says no backpacks in the cathedral.[1] The ticket site's home page bans backpacks or bags larger than 40 x 40 cm.[3] The individual ticket pages for the free Pórtico visit and the roofs go further: no bags, backpacks, umbrellas or pilgrims' staffs at all.[5][4] XTOUR's reading is that the strictest rule, on the page for the visit you booked, is the one to plan for.

The ticket pages also ask for punctuality at the themed visits, a QR ticket on paper or on a phone, and no filming or photography in the Pórtico or the museum's spaces.[6][3]

Where the cathedral's pages disagree

Besides the bag rules, the museum's own hours page gives one set of opening times, and the cathedral's visits page and the ticket pages give another.[6][1][10] XTOUR does not repeat either. The museum's hours page also warns of extra closures for official or liturgical events and, in the Pórtico, for conservation.[10]

Mass, pilgrims and the Botafumeiro in autumn 2026

Two things change what a visitor sees this autumn. First, the cathedral announced on 17 September 2026 that, because of works around the Capilla Mayor, the Pilgrim's Masses move to the nearby church of San Agustín from Friday 16 October until further notice, with only the earliest Mass staying in the cathedral's Capilla de la Comunión. The same notice says visits to the cathedral continue as normal during its usual opening hours.[14]

Second, the Botafumeiro, the great censer that the cathedral swings on its main solemnities, carries a notice on the cathedral's liturgy page saying it is temporarily out of use because of restoration works. The same page still lists the solemnities on which it operates and says pilgrimages can request it.[13] It gives no end date for the works, so XTOUR does not say when it will next be used.

The cathedral lists its Pilgrim's Reception Office separately from the visits, at Rúa das Carretas 33.[1]

What XTOUR does not tell you

XTOUR does not publish prices, opening hours, Mass times, visit lengths or session times for the cathedral or its museum; the cathedral's visits and ticket pages set them. XTOUR has no information on queues, and it does not know when the Botafumeiro's restoration or the works at the Capilla Mayor will end.

For the city as a base, see the Santiago de Compostela destination page and the Spain travel guide.