2025: Tips on Buying Tickets to Visit Milan Cathedral (Duomo di Milano)

The only sensible way to visit the Gothic Duomo di Milano is by buying skip-the-line tickets in advance to avoid the long queues of travelers trying to visit Milan Cathedral with its art and marvelous rooftop terraces.

Western facade of Milan Cathedral -- White marble gothic at its best, even if only done in the 19th century. Buy tickets online to visit Milan Cathedral (Duomo di Milano) and the roof terraces of the largest Gothic church in the world

The white marble Gothic facade of the cathedral in Milan makes it one of the most recognizable church exteriors in the world. The richly decorated interior is the largest Gothic church in the world but the opportunity to walk on the terraces and roof of the nave really makes visiting this famous cathedral particularly special. Admission is charged with skip-the-line time-slot reservation tickets essential to see the church inside, to go up to the roof terraces by stairs or elevator, or a combination ticket to see all the sights. Guided tours are also a good skip-the-line option to enter the Duomo without delays.

Visiting Milan Cathedral in Italy

Time-slot reservation tickets are essential to see the interior of Milan Cathedral or to go up to the roof terraces.

The magnificent exterior of Milan Cathedral (Duomo di Milano, or locally Domm de Milan) with more than 2000 sculptures may be enjoyed for free, but everything else at the Duomo is charged for. Information inside the church and on the roof is virtually non-existent, making it sensible to either book a guided tour, an audioguide, or take a good guidebook.

Buying tickets online in advance is very much encouraged, but a limited number of Duomo di Milano tickets are still sold onsite if time slots are available. Card payments are preferred, but cash is still possible when buying cathedral tickets in person in Milan. The ticket office is on the south side of the church (info point) or inside the Duomo Museum.

All Milan Cathedral tickets are currently with time-slot reservations but queues still form at the security checkpoints and delays may occur at busy times, as the number of visitors allowed into the church at any given time is restricted. The best time to visit the cathedral is early morning.

Guided tours use separate skip-the-line entrances to ensure quick admission. In the high season, more expensive fast-track lift passes promise shorter queues for the elevator to the roof terraces and direct entrance into the Duomo afterward — guided tours with similar benefits are sometimes cheaper.

Floor Plan and Access Gates at Milan Cathedral

Tickets for Milan Cathedral usually specify which entrance to use otherwise check the floor plan maps posted at the Duomo.

Access points for all Duomo di Milano sights are from outside the church. Entry gates depend on your ticket (and maintenance work), but are usually as follows:

general admission to the Duomo from the southwest (Piazza del Duomo side),
rooftop terraces by stairs from the meeting of the north transept and nave,
rooftop access by lift (north transept and choir), and
fast-track elevator from the south choir (also used by many guided tours).

Admission to the archaeological area is from inside the church near the western doors. The Duomo Museum, included in most cathedral tickets, is in a separate building on the same piazza as the Novecento (20th-Century Art Museum).

Milan Duomo tickets are best bought online, but any leftover tickets are sold daily at the ticket shop directly across from the south transept (and in front of the Duomo Museum).

Buying Tickets for Individual Travelers to Milan Cathedral

A bewildering number of tickets and combinations are available to visit the Duomo, museum, and roof terraces of Milan Cathedral. Some fast-track tickets are only sold in the high-season summer months and the names of passes frequently change but are replaced with similar combination offers.

The following tickets are usually on offer to individual travelers visiting Milan Cathedral — buy online to save time and ensure admission on busy days:

Entry Tickets for Milan Cathedral but not the roof terraces:

Cathedral (Duomo) — the interior of the main church only. This is the cheapest entrance ticket, but it is only available on Wednesday when the museum is closed (saves only €2).
Duomo+Museum — the interior of the church and the cathedral museum (cheapest entrance ticket on any day but Wednesday).
Culture Pass — the interior of the church, the archaeological area, St Charles Crypt, and the Duomo Museum.

Tickets giving access to Milan Cathedral and the rooftop terraces:

Duomo and Terraces by Stairs — access to the rooftop terraces by stairs, the interior of the church, and the Duomo Museum.
Duomo and Terraces by Lift — access to the roof terraces by elevator (but usually stairs going down), the interior of the church, and the Duomo Museum. A Fast-Track ticket has shorter queues and direct admission into the church afterward.
Duomo Pass Lift — access to the roof terraces by elevator (usually stairs going down), the interior of the church, the archaeological area, and the Duomo Museum. A Fast Track Pass has shorter queues and direct admission into the church afterward but sometimes a guided tour offering similar benefits is cheaper.

Milan Duomo Roof Terrace Only Tickets

On the Roof of Milan Cathedral Nave Buy tickets to visit the rooftop terraces of Milan Cathedral — it is 250 stairs (or a short elevator ride) for close-up views of the gargoyles and Gothic spires.

Tickets giving access to the rooftop terraces but not the interior of the Duomo or Museum:

Rooftop Terraces (Stairs) — Access on foot — visit the roof only via stairs (250) and no admission to the church.
Rooftop Terraces (Lift) — Access by lift — visit the roof only by elevator (but usually descending via stairs) and no admission to the church.

Other Duomo Combination Tickets:

Duomo+Ambrosiana — access to the rooftop by stairs, the interior of the church, the archaeological area, the Duomo Museum, as well as the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana and St Sepolcro Crypt (not always included).

A variety of tours are also available for the church only, the church and terraces, private tours, and in combination with other sights, including Da Vinci’s Last Supper and La Scala Theater.

Milan Cathedral Exterior

The magnificent Milan Cathedral (Duomo di Milano) is the third-largest church in Europe (or second, or fourth, depending on who and what is counting) and the largest in Italy if the Vatican (St Peter’s Basilica) is considered an independent state.

Milan Cathedral is High Gothic — a style fairly uncommon in major churches in Italy. (The cathedrals in Pisa and Siena are for example Romanesque, Florence somewhat hides its Gothic origins, while many others are Renaissance or Baroque.)

Construction of the current cathedral in Milan started in 1386 and dragged on until 1965, although the church was of course already in use much earlier. The Duomo di Milano was formally consecrated in 1572. The magnificent facade was only completed in 1810 — still, several decades before a similar feat was accomplished in Florence.

At the time of its consecration in the late 16th century, the exterior of the church was still bare and undecorated. Although at this time already well out of fashion, the exterior was decorated in the flamboyant high and later Neo-Gothic style.

An incomplete Renaissance facade was removed and replaced with the white marble Gothic facade on the orders of Napoleon Buonaparte, who was crowned King of Italy here in 1805. (Erroneous expectations that the French treasury would finance the work sped up construction significantly.)

Most Richly Sculpted Church in the World

Forest of Spires on Milan Cathedral Roof

The High Gothic cathedral exterior decorations include nearly 2300 statues (around a thousand more are inside), 135 spires, 150 gargoyles, and endless architectural details. Most are copies, but many originals are in the Cathedral Museum.

Many of the biblical scenes are fairly easy to read but many visitors are unfamiliar with events from the lives of various saints. Guides often point out the more interesting ones, making it worth eavesdropping if not taking a tour or carrying a good guidebook.

It is possible to visit the rooftop and roof terraces of Milan Cathedral for a close-up look at the forest of spires, flying buttresses, and statues. Roof visits are possible with or without a guided tour — ascent by elevator or cheaper by stairs (around 250) for magnificent views.

→ See Buy Tickets for Rooftop Visits of Milan Cathedral for more details.

Measurements of Milan Cathedral

Measured by internal area, Milan Cathedral is the second largest church in Europe (behind St Peter’s) and the third largest in the world (behind the Basilica of Our Lady of Aparecida in Brazil). On gross volume, it slipped behind Seville Cathedral, with which it vies for the claim of being the largest Gothic church in the world.

The basic measurements of Milan Cathedral are:

Length (external): 158.6 m (520 ft)
Length (interior): 148.5 m (487 ft)
Width (transept): 92 m (302 ft)
Height (nave): 46.8 m (154 ft)
Pillars: 52 up to 24 m high (79 ft)
Height (external up to the Madonna’s head): 108.5 m (354 ft)
Width of Western Face: 61.5 m (202 ft)
Height of Western Facade: 56 (184 ft)
Interior area: 11,700 m² (126,000 sq ft)
Number of spires: 135
Around 3400 sculptures, of which 2300 are on the outside of the church

Visit the Interior of the Duomo di Milano

The interior of Milan Cathedral impresses mostly with its size and architecture. Although the church is full of art, it certainly is not the artistic tour de force of many Tuscan cathedrals, such as in Pisa and Siena, or Florentine churches such as Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella, or San Lorenzo.

The basic structure of Milan Cathedral was erected between 1385 and 1520. Gothic was already going out of fashion but the techniques were well understood, allowing for the vast dimensions, the high vaulting, and the huge windows. Planned Renaissance facades were never completed, and baroque elements are mostly limited to interior decorations.

The church follows a fairly conventional Latin cross layout, but with oversized dimensions. The nave is flanked by two aisles on each side, while the transept protrudes only slightly. The rounded apse behind the choir is the oldest part of the church.

The roof is supported by 52 tall pillars, 24 m high, with vaulting soaring up to nearly 47 m.

Magnificent Stained-Glass Windows in Milan Cathedral

The outsized dimensions and the Gothic architecture allowed for larger windows than are generally found in Italian churches. The Duomo has over 164 large windows, of which 55 are historiated, as a pauper’s Bible, using over 3,000 characters. Up to 144 individual scenes are possible in some windows.

The 45 large windows date in parts from as early as the 14th century to the 20th century. The large painted glass windows in the apse are copies of the original stained glass windows that were destroyed during the early 19th century. However, many of the windows in the church are originals but heavily restored throughout the centuries; some original windows are beautifully displayed in the Duomo Museum.

Sculptures in Milan Cathedral

The most famous statue in Milan Cathedral is arguably Saint Bartholomew Flayed (1562) — Frank Schulenburg / Wikimedia Commons

The church has virtually no information on the around a thousand sculptures and paintings inside the church — either buy a guidebook or take a tour.

The most famous statue is arguably Saint Bartholomew Flayed (1562) — this work by Marco d’Agrate, a student of Leonardo da Vinci, shows the skinned saint carrying his own skin like a toga. (Following recent restoration works, it is now in the retrochoir.)

On the baroque altar are two sculptures of two famous local bishops: St Ambrose, the fourth-century bishop who baptized the later Saint Augustine, and St Carlo Borromeo, who finally made the duomo usable in the early 16th century. His mummified body is in a rock crystal coffin in the opulently decorated crypt underneath the choir.

(St Charles’ Crypt is included in some tickets; otherwise, an additional €3.50. Opening hours shorter than the rest of the church.)

A red light on a cross in the cupola above the altar shows where a nail from the cross of Christ’s crucifixion is kept. This relic is only shown for three days each year in mid-September.

The 1985/86 Tamburini organ is one of the largest in the world, with around 16,000 pipes and 186 stops played on five manuals and pedals. Two of the four monumental wooden caskets are from the 16th century.

Archaeological Area of the Duomo di Milano

The archaeological area — main entrance near the rear of the church — consists of the foundation and fragments of an earlier church and baptistry that were destroyed to enable the larger new cathedral.

The area is only of moderate interest and, like the artwork in the rest of the church, is not helped by the lack of information on what visitors see. Although worth seeing, this area is certainly not worth queuing to see.

Admission to the archaeological area is not included in the basic cathedral entrance ticket but is part of many other combination passes.

Duomo Museum

Access to the Duomo Museum (Grande Museo del Duomo di Milano) is from outside the church — it is to the south of the nave next to the ticket shop in a former royal palace. The large displays in around two dozen rooms are of items typically found in cathedral museums, including the treasury, vestments, religious paraphernalia, original art, and architectural detailing from the Duomo, and scale models of designs used, or rejected, during the construction of the church.

Highlights include some of the original sculptures and stained-glass windows — now placed lower and easier to appreciate than in the original position inside the church.

Almost all cathedral interior tickets include access to the Duomo Museum, which is interesting and well worth visiting. See Visit the Milan Duomo Museum for a short description.

Visitor Information for the Duomo di Milano

Opening Hours of Milan Cathedral

Most of the sights associated with the Duomo di Milano are open daily from 9:00 to 19:00 (last admissions 18:00).

The cathedral may, of course, close for religious ceremonies, but these are mostly only on high holidays inside the main church. Although the main church is open on Sunday morning, during mass, parts of the building, including the choir, may be closed for tourist visits.

The exception is the Duomo Museum, which is open Thursday to Tuesday from 10:00 to 19:00. The museum is closed on Wednesday (not Monday as stated in older guides). No discounts are given on combination tickets, as these tickets and passes are generally valid for two days for sights not requiring time-slot reservations.

Also, note that the opening hours for collecting and returning audio guides are sometimes shorter than for the church itself.

Prices of Tickets and Tours of Milan Cathedral

Ticket prices range from €10 for the cathedral only to over €30 for access to all sights and using the elevator to the roof. You can only buy tickets in person at the Ticket Shop of the Duomo if time slots fail to sell out online. Arriving without advance-purchased tickets is only sensible early mornings during quiet, low-season periods.

Guided tours often include the full Duomo Pass with admission to the museum and archaeological area included, even if these are not visited as part of the tour.

A variety of tours are also available for the church only, the church and terraces, private tours, and in combination with other sights, including Da Vinci’s Last Supper and La Scala or city walks. Expect small discounts if buying tickets in combination with other sights such as La Scala and the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana.

All admissions to the cathedral are currently by time slot reservation tickets. However, the best time to visit Milan Cathedral is as close as possible to opening time, because long lines form for the security check later in the day.

Modest dress is required for visiting the church, including for men, women, and children; no bare shoulders or shorts. Sports team t-shirts are often not allowed either, especially on days of major matches.

Food and drink are not allowed inside the church. For many sights in Italy, 500 ml is the maximum water bottle size, and lately, no water at all is permitted at many top sights, especially art galleries. No luggage or large bags — book luggage storage in advance.