# St Paul's Cathedral audio guide, five stops, free.

Wren's dome stands 111 metres (365 feet) to the cross and was topped out in 1708. Hear five of its stories from pavement to Crypt right here, then photograph any of its more than five hundred monuments and ask Chiaro whose it is.

Made by Chiaro. Not affiliated with St Paul's Cathedral. Page: https://chiaro.ai/landmarks/st-pauls-cathedral/

Start this St Paul's Cathedral audio guide, self-guided and free, on the pavement at the top of Ludgate Hill, facing the west front with Queen Anne at your back: the first stop needs no ticket at all. Inside, walk east up the nave to the Wellington monument in its arch on the north side, then on to the crossing to stand under the Dome and look up. From the south transept the stairs climb 376 steps to the stone balcony that circles the outside of the Dome, for the view over the river. Come back down and descend into the Crypt, to Nelson's tomb directly beneath the spot where you stood looking up, which is also where the cathedral's own map brings a visit to a close. Between Queen Anne and Nelson there are about ten minutes of narration; the level walking is less than two hundred metres, and the stairs are what eat the time.

We read the cathedral's own pages at stpauls.co.uk and its accessibility map on 26 September 2026, then held each date, name and measurement up to a second, unrelated source; the sentence each one rests on is kept on file with it. Services come first in this building and the visitor route bends around them, so if a virger or a notice on the day tells you something different from what you read here, go with them.

## The stops

### 1. The west front, from the top of Ludgate Hill

Sir Christopher Wren (1632–1723), with the sculptor Francis Bird (1667–1731) for the pediment and the statues · 1675–1711; Bird's pediment carved 1706, the apostles 1721, the clock in the south-west tower 1709 · Portland limestone; Bird's pediment relief 64 feet long and 17 feet high · The forecourt at the top of Ludgate Hill, outside the West Entrance, beside the statue of Queen Anne

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/st-pauls-cathedral/en/west-front.mp3?v=1017982 (127 s)

Look for:
- The two storeys of paired columns. The lower row spans the whole width of the front, the upper row only its middle: Wren is showing you, from outside, where the aisles stop and the taller nave carries on.
- The round openings at the base of each tower. The clock fills the one on the right-hand, south tower; the left-hand one is empty.
- The crowded relief in the pediment, horsemen and all. It is Francis Bird's Conversion of Saint Paul, carved in 1706 and 64 feet long.
- Queen Anne on her pedestal behind you, turned away from the church and looking down Ludgate Hill. She is the copy of 1886, not Bird's original.

Stand at the foot of the steps, with Queen Anne behind you, and look up at the front. Two storeys of paired columns. Compare their widths. The lower row runs the whole breadth of the building; the upper row covers only the middle. That is Christopher Wren telling you what is behind the wall: the wide bottom row fronts the nave and both its aisles, the narrow top row fronts the nave alone, which rises higher than the aisles do.

Everything you are looking at is a replacement, and there is an irony in that. Wren had been advising on repairs to the medieval cathedral on this hill since 1661, and in May 1666 he proposed rebuilding it in the classical style instead of what he called the Gothick Rudeness of the old design. In September the Great Fire of London gutted the building and settled the argument. He was formally given the job on the thirtieth of July 1669, and the first stone went down in June 1675. Nobody agrees on the day: three contemporary accounts give the twenty-first, the twenty-fifth and the twenty-eighth.

It was paid for by a tax on coal, and it was finished while its architect was still alive, which almost never happens to a cathedral. His own son helped set the last stone on the lantern, on the twenty-sixth of October 1708.

Look up into the triangle of the pediment. That crowded relief with the horsemen is the Conversion of Saint Paul, the moment on the road to Damascus, carved by Francis Bird in 1706 and sixty-four feet long.

Then the towers. Each rises from a square block with a big round opening in it. On the right, the south tower, it holds the clock. On the left it is simply empty. Both are capped with a gilded pineapple.

One thing inside did come through the fire whole. The only complete monument left from the old cathedral is the poet and Dean John Donne, who posed for his own memorial wrapped in a burial shroud.

Now turn round. Queen Anne has her back to the church and faces down Ludgate Hill. She is a copy of 1886. Bird's original of 1712 was attacked three times and badly weathered, and ended up in a garden near Hastings. The sculptor hired to make the copy, Richard Belt, was sent to prison for obtaining money by false pretences before he finished, and someone else completed her. Somebody once wrote a verse about where she stands, reputedly scrawled on the statue itself: Brandy Nan, Brandy Nan, left in the lurch, her face to the gin-shop, her back to the church.

### 2. The Wellington monument, on the north side of the nave

Alfred Stevens (1817–1875); the horse and rider on top by John Tweed (1869–1933) · Designed from 1856; completed in 1912, when the figure on horseback was unveiled · Marble canopy and bronze figures, in an arch of Wren's nave, which is 28 metres (91 feet) high · Cathedral Floor, in the arch between the Nave and the North Aisle

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/st-pauls-cathedral/en/wellington-monument.mp3?v=979739 (122 s)

Look for:
- The rider on the very top: Wellington on his horse Copenhagen, the last piece to arrive, in 1912, sixty years after the funeral.
- The dark bronze figure lying on the sarcophagus under the marble canopy. That is the Duke's effigy.
- The bronze groups at the two ends of the canopy: Truth tearing the tongue out of Falsehood's mouth, and Valour trampling Cowardice underfoot.

From the west end of the nave, walk a little way east towards the Dome and stop at the big arch on your left, the north side, and look at what fills it. It is the largest monument in the building, and it took sixty years to get here.

Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, the victor of Waterloo, died in 1852. His funeral procession on the eighteenth of November drew an estimated one and a half million people into the streets. The funeral carriage had been cast from more than ten tons of bronze taken from cannons captured at Waterloo, and when it reached the cathedral its mechanism failed: getting the coffin inside took over an hour. Up to fifteen thousand people were waiting in here, with the interior blacked out.

The monument was put out to competition, and the sculptor Alfred Stevens entered it in 1856. He agreed a fee that turned out to be hopelessly small, spent most of his working life on the commission, and died in 1875 without seeing it set up. For years it stood squeezed into a side chapel, the Chapel of Saint Michael and Saint George, where nobody could see the bronzes properly. Only later did it move into this arch, the space it was designed for.

Look under the marble canopy first. The dark figure lying on the sarcophagus is a bronze effigy of the Duke. Then look at the two ends of the canopy, at the bronze groups: Truth tearing the tongue out of the mouth of Falsehood, and Valour trampling Cowardice underfoot. Stevens does not do subtle.

Now the top. Wellington on his horse, Copenhagen. A rider was in the plan from the start, but people objected to the idea of a horse in a church, and the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects declared the structure would not bear the weight. The horse and rider were finished by another sculptor, John Tweed, and unveiled in 1912.

While you are standing here, look down the length of the nave, twenty-eight metres high under its row of shallow saucer domes. Wren designed this interior with no room for monuments at all, and for almost a century after it was finished there were none. The first three were the prison reformer John Howard, Samuel Johnson and the painter Joshua Reynolds. Then Parliament took an interest, and thirty-three state-paid monuments followed. There are more than five hundred now.

Wellington himself is not up here. He lies in the Crypt, under the middle of the Dome, beside Nelson, which is where this walk will finish.

### 3. Under the Dome, looking up

Sir Christopher Wren (1632–1723); paintings by Sir James Thornhill (1675 or 1676–1734) · Dome completed 1708; Thornhill's paintings 1716–1719 · Inner dome on eight piers, painted in grisaille; the Whispering Gallery runs 30 metres (99 feet) above the floor and 34 metres (112 feet) across · Cathedral Floor, at the crossing under the Dome, by the Dome altar

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/st-pauls-cathedral/en/under-the-dome.mp3?v=1238038 (155 s)

Look for:
- The thin railing on the cornice above the arches. That is the Whispering Gallery, 30 metres up, and the specks leaning on it are visitors.
- The eight scenes from the life of Saint Paul in the dome, painted by James Thornhill in grisaille: tones of a single colour, not full colour.
- The small bright hole at the very top, the oculus. Through it you are looking at the painted inside of a brick cone, a second structure above this one.
- The mosaics in the curved triangles between the arches, just under the drum. The four prophets are after designs by Alfred Stevens, the sculptor of the Wellington monument.

Walk on to the middle, where the nave meets the transepts, stand near the altar under the Dome, and look straight up. Take your time. This is the view the whole building was made for.

The ring of railing high above the arches is the Whispering Gallery, thirty metres above the floor and thirty-four metres across. Those specks leaning on it are people who have climbed 257 steps. A whisper spoken against the wall up there can be heard by someone with an ear to the wall anywhere else round the circle, and this is where the effect was first understood: Lord Rayleigh worked out, around 1878, that the sound travels by clinging to the curved wall. Physicists still call them whispering-gallery waves. Clap your hands up there and you get four echoes.

Above the gallery rise the drum, with its windows and its statues in niches, and then the painted dome. The eight scenes from the life of Saint Paul are by James Thornhill, painted between 1716 and 1719, and notice that they are not in full colour. They are grisaille, painted in tones of a single colour. When Thornhill won the commission, the Archbishop of Canterbury is said to have remarked that he was no judge of painting, but that the painter must be a Protestant and an Englishman.

Now the real surprise. What you see from here is not the dome you saw from the street. Wren built three: this inner dome, then above it a cone of brick that carries the stone lantern, and over both an outer dome of timber and lead that hides the cone completely. Look at the very top, at the small bright hole. That is the oculus, borrowed from the Pantheon in Rome, and through it you are looking at the painted inside of the brick cone.

Down in the curved triangles between the arches, the colourful mosaics are Victorian. The four prophets are after designs by Alfred Stevens, whose Wellington monument you have just seen; he finished only Isaiah before he died, and another artist completed the rest from his designs.

Most domes stand on four piers. Wren put this one on eight, to spread the load. Even so, it moved. Surveyors found the piers settling in 1913 and 1914, the City served a Dangerous Structures Notice on Christmas Eve 1924, and from 1925 engineers pushed concrete and more than 250 steel bars into the piers and bound a steel chain round the dome. Then came the war. In September 1940 a time-delayed bomb that had hit the cathedral was defused by Royal Engineers; set off later somewhere safe, it left a thirty-metre crater. In April 1941 a bomb on the north transept shifted the whole Dome sideways by a small amount.

One last thing, under your feet. At the climax of Nelson's funeral in 1806 his coffin was brought to this crossing and lowered through the floor into the Crypt by a hidden mechanism. The sailors of the Victory were meant to throw the ship's flag in after it. Instead they tore it to pieces, to keep.

### 4. The Stone Gallery, outside the Dome

Sir Christopher Wren (1632–1723); the ball and cross on the lantern redesigned by C. R. Cockerell in 1821 · Dome and lantern completed 1708; ball and cross replaced 1821 · Stone balustraded balcony round the outer dome, 52 metres above the ground; the Golden Gallery is at 85 metres and the cross at 111 metres · The Dome: the Stone Gallery, outside, 376 steps up from the Cathedral Floor; the Golden Gallery above it at 528 steps

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/st-pauls-cathedral/en/stone-gallery.mp3?v=985799 (123 s)

Look for:
- The Millennium Bridge, running straight at you from the south bank. It was aligned on this building, so that from the far end it frames the cathedral.
- Tate Modern on the far bank beside the bridge's southern end, in what was Bankside Power Station.
- Above your head: the ribbed lead of the outer dome, then the square lantern with the Golden Gallery round its base, 33 metres higher than you.

You are outside now, on the stone balcony that runs right round the Dome, fifty-two metres above the churchyard and 376 steps up from the floor. Get your breath back, then work your way round to the side that faces the river.

Straight below you, running across from the south bank, is the Millennium Bridge, the steel footbridge that opened on the tenth of June 2000. It was aligned on this building on purpose: stand at its far end and the bridge frames the cathedral's south front. Londoners called it the Wobbly Bridge, because it swayed so alarmingly on its first day that it was shut, and it stayed shut for almost two years. The big building beside its southern end is Tate Modern, which began life as Bankside Power Station.

Until the late twentieth century nothing on the City's skyline stood taller than the dome you are standing on. Wren designed it to be seen rising over a crowd of slender church spires, and more than fifty of the City's churches are his.

Now look up. Above you the lead of the outer dome is ribbed to match the pilasters below it, and near the top are eight small light wells, barely visible, that feed daylight down through the hidden cone to the inside. Above that sits the lantern, which is square rather than round and weighs about 850 tons. The narrow ring round its base is the Golden Gallery, eighty-five metres up and the highest point you can reach. The ball and cross on the very top are twenty-three feet high and weigh about seven tonnes; the originals of 1708 were replaced in 1821.

The whole thing is 365 feet tall to the cross, 111 metres, a figure usually put down to Wren's interest in astronomy. The medieval cathedral on this hill was taller still. Its spire was beaten for height only by Lincoln Cathedral and one church in the Baltic port of Stralsund, until lightning destroyed it in 1561. But no other Church of England cathedral has a dome at all.

The dome's closest call came on the twenty-ninth of December 1940, when the streets around here were burning. Churchill insisted that every fire-fighting resource be sent to Saint Paul's. The photographer Herbert Mason caught the dome from a roof in Tudor Street, pale and whole above the smoke, and the picture became Saint Paul's Survives, the best-known image of London at war. The damage that anti-aircraft fire did to the dome up here was not finally repaired until 1967.

### 5. Nelson's tomb in the Crypt, under the Dome

Benedetto da Rovezzano (1474–c. 1552), for Cardinal Thomas Wolsey from 1524; taken over for Henry VIII's unfinished tomb, and set over Nelson's grave in Wren's Crypt · Sarcophagus begun 1524; Nelson buried here on 9 January 1806 · Black marble sarcophagus, in the Nelson Chamber directly under the centre of the Dome, 37 to 38 steps below the Cathedral Floor · The Crypt: the Nelson Chamber, right under the centre of the Dome, with Wellington's tomb beside it

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/st-pauls-cathedral/en/nelson-tomb.mp3?v=1119546 (140 s)

Look for:
- The black sarcophagus itself, made almost three centuries before Nelson for a cardinal who fell from favour.
- The mosaic floor all round the tomb, laid in the nineteenth century by women prisoners from Woking Gaol.
- The line of Latin set into the floor at the tomb's foot: Palmam qui meruit ferat, let him who has earned it bear the palm. It is Nelson's motto.
- Before you leave the Crypt, Wren's own plain grave, and the epitaph above it that tells you to look around.

Go down the steps into the Crypt and find the round chamber right under the centre of the Dome, directly below the spot where you stood looking up. Face the black tomb between the columns.

This is Horatio Nelson. He was shot at Trafalgar on the twenty-first of October 1805 and died at sea, and his body came home in the largest water cask on the ship, filled with brandy, which the surgeon chose over naval rum because it was stronger. The coffin inside was made from the timber of a French ship he had defeated. He lay in state at Greenwich and was buried here on the ninth of January 1806.

He had not expected this. At the Battle of Cape Saint Vincent in 1797 he famously shouted, Westminster Abbey or glorious victory. By the time he died, the Abbey was full.

The sarcophagus is second-hand, and very grandly so. The black marble was made for Cardinal Wolsey, Henry the Eighth's Lord Chancellor, by a Florentine sculptor, Benedetto da Rovezzano, who came to England in 1524. When Wolsey fell from favour, Henry took it over for his own tomb, which was never finished, and it waited almost three centuries for Nelson. There was a public outcry, too, when it came out that the four vergers were charging visitors a shilling each to see it and pocketing as much as three hundred pounds a day between them.

Look down at the floor. The mosaics were laid in the nineteenth century by women prisoners from Woking Gaol, and at the foot of the tomb a line of Latin is set into them: Palmam qui meruit ferat. Let him who has earned it bear the palm. It is Nelson's motto.

Wellington lies beside him. When his coffin came down through the floor in 1852 it was set on top of Nelson's sarcophagus, and it stayed there until November 1853, when it was finally lowered to the ground. His own tomb, cut from a single block of Cornish stone, was not finished until 1858. The Illustrated London News wrote that Wellington and Nelson sleep side by side under the Dome. Churchill is not buried here at all, but the gates made in memory of his funeral in 1965 were placed in line with the two of them.

All round you are the piers that hold the building up. The Crypt runs under the whole cathedral, not just the east end as in most, it is the largest in Europe, and half its space is solid masonry spreading the weight of the church above you.

Before you climb out, find one more grave. Christopher Wren was the first person buried in his own cathedral, in 1723, under a plain stone, among memorials to his family, to his collaborator Robert Hooke and to his masons. Above it, in Latin, is his epitaph: Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you.

## Before you go

St Paul's Cathedral, St Paul's Churchyard, London EC4M 8AD, at the top of Ludgate Hill. The cathedral's accessibility map marks the West Entrance at the head of the 24 west steps, which is where the first stop is played. For step-free access use the ramped North Transept entrance, which leads straight onto the Cathedral Floor.

St Paul's station on the Central line, in fare zone 1, is 270 metres away, about three minutes on foot. City Thameslink is 300 metres and Blackfriars, on the Underground and National Rail, 500 metres. River boats stop at Blackfriars Pier, a nine-minute walk, and at Bankside Pier, twelve minutes away.

- Sightseeing is Monday to Saturday. The cathedral says it is open from 8.30am with last entry usually at 4pm, and that the Dome Galleries open at 9.30am with last entry at 4.15pm; times can change, so check the calendar on stpauls.co.uk for your day. On Sundays the building is open for services, and in the summer season the three Dome Galleries also open on Sundays, on a separate Dome Sunday ticket priced on stpauls.co.uk; this year's season runs from 15 March to 25 October 2026.
- A Monday to Saturday sightseeing ticket is £27 for an adult and £10.50 for a child, and on those days it covers the Cathedral Floor, the Crypt and all three Dome Galleries, multimedia guide included. Booking online gives the fastest entry, but tickets are also sold on the door. Services are always free.
- The galleries are stairs only: 257 steps to the Whispering Gallery, 376 to the Stone Gallery and 528 in all to the Golden Gallery, and children on a child ticket must be with an adult. Non-flash photos are welcome on the floor, in the Crypt and on the two outside galleries, but not on the Whispering Gallery, in St Dunstan's Chapel or during services, and video is not allowed.
- Bags bigger than 45 by 30 by 25 centimetres, handles and wheels included, are not allowed in, and there is no cloakroom, so travel light.

Official tickets: https://www.stpauls.co.uk/book-tickets

The cathedral's own multimedia guide comes with every sightseeing ticket at no extra charge: a touch-screen handset from the multimedia desk on the Cathedral Floor, with commentary in nine languages, fly-through footage of the Dome galleries, and family, audio-description and British Sign Language versions. Its guides also lead a short Highlights tour and a longer tour of the Cathedral Floor and Crypt, both free to ticket holders, booked on the day at the Guiding Desk and given in English. What this page adds is the first word before you are through the door: five narrated stops on your own phone, starting on the pavement outside.

Official site: https://www.stpauls.co.uk/

## Questions

**Is there a free St Paul's Cathedral audio guide?**

You are reading one: five self-guided stops from the pavement on Ludgate Hill down to Nelson's tomb, each with its script printed under the player. St Paul's has its own multimedia handset as well, and that too is covered by an ordinary sightseeing ticket. For the hundreds of monuments neither of them reaches, a photo in the Chiaro app brings the story.

**Can I listen to the St Paul's Cathedral audio guide without a ticket?**

Only the opening one. You hear it standing in the forecourt facing the west front, with the Queen Anne statue behind you, and it needs nothing but the view. The other four, the Wellington monument, the Dome, the Stone Gallery and Nelson's tomb, are inside, and one standard Monday to Saturday sightseeing ticket covers all of them, the climb to the galleries included.

**How much is the official St Paul's Cathedral audio guide?**

Nothing on top of admission: the cathedral includes its multimedia guides for ticket holders, with commentary in nine languages and family, audio-description and British Sign Language versions. The Highlights tour and the Cathedral Floor and Crypt tour, led by the cathedral's guides, are free for ticket holders too. The one extra is the Triforium Treasures tour, at £16 per person on top of admission.

**Are the Whispering, Stone and Golden Galleries included in the St Paul's ticket?**

Yes. A standard Monday to Saturday sightseeing ticket includes the Cathedral Floor, the Crypt and the Dome Galleries. They are reached by stairs only: 257 steps to the Whispering Gallery, 376 to the Stone Gallery and 528 in total to the Golden Gallery, and the cathedral says the galleries open at 9.30am with last entry at 4.15pm.

**Is St Paul's Cathedral open for sightseeing on Sundays?**

Not the main building: on Sundays St Paul's is open for services, which are free. The exception is the Dome: in the summer season the three Dome Galleries open on Sundays too, on a separate Dome Sunday ticket, and in 2026 that season runs from 15 March to 25 October. Monday to Saturday the cathedral opens for sightseeing from 8.30am, with last entry usually at 4pm.

## Continue in the app

Point Chiaro at anything in St Paul's Cathedral.

Five stops out of a building with more than five hundred monuments, a Crypt that runs under the whole of it and a roofline full of carved saints. A memorial in the south aisle, a name cut into the Crypt floor, a spire you can see from the balcony: photograph it and Chiaro tells you who is remembered there, who made it and why it ended up here, then stays with the conversation until the next memorial catches your eye.

Download Chiaro: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6745618830?pt=127817940&ct=st-pauls-cathedral-md&mt=8