Grace Cathedral

The admission desk is not the only way in.

Grace charges for sightseeing, and the self-guided tour comes with it. But their own visit page ends on a sentence most people skim past: anyone seeking a private place for prayer or meditation is welcomed at no admission cost during sightseeing hours. You don't have to be Episcopalian and you don't have to explain yourself. If you want twenty quiet minutes in the nave, that is a thing you are allowed to have.

Once you're inside there is a lot of it. Two labyrinths. The Ghiberti doors, bronze, inspired by the Gates of Paradise in Florence. The AIDS Interfaith Memorial Chapel. Stained glass, including the Human Endeavor windows. Art by Keith Haring, Ansel Adams and David LaChapelle, which is not a sentence you expect to write about a cathedral. An Aeolian-Skinner organ with 7,466 pipes. The self-guided route runs twelve stops, and there's a children's map that turns it into a treasure hunt.

Remember that it is a working church rather than an attraction. Sightseeing is Monday to Saturday 10 to 5 and Sunday 1 to 5, and during your visit you may walk into organ practice, a rehearsal, a service or a wedding. They also close for conventions and holidays, sometimes at short notice. Their visit page carries the closure list; check it the morning you go rather than the week before.

Now the part that will cost you money if nobody tells you. The cathedral garage is on Taylor Street midway between California and Sacramento, and it runs $4 per fifteen minutes — sixteen dollars an hour, $45 for a full day. There are 125 spaces, the clearance is 8 feet 2, and it's pay-on-exit. If you're driving, book ahead through SpotHero rather than arriving and discovering the rate. If you're cycling, there's a rack for six bikes just inside the entrance on the right.

Two entrances matter. Concerts go in at the top of the Great Steps. The accessible entrance is the double glass doors at 1051 Taylor Street, past the Great Steps toward Sacramento, with an elevator inside to the main floor.

AURA, the Moment Factory light and sound piece running in the nave, enters from Taylor Street rather than the Great Steps — worth knowing before you climb them. It runs 52 minutes: about fifteen on an app-guided walk through the building, then 37 of projection mapping overhead. The fact that they sell a neck pillow as an add-on tells you everything about which direction you'll be looking. Seating splits into general admission at the front and back and a premium band through the middle with the cleaner sightlines.

And the Christmas concerts have run since 1947 — the Choir of Men and Boys with full orchestra, a brass programme, a gospel and jazz evening, and a one-hour family sing-along that is the only one of them actually built for children. Grace puts it plainly on the others: children are welcome if they can quietly enjoy a ninety-minute concert. Tickets are sold through City Box Office and the prices include all fees, which is rarer than it should be.