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Westminster Abbey

London, London, United Kingdom

Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey is the church where kings and queens are coronated, married, and buried. Lots of famous people are buried or memorialized here. The entrance fee is currently £16 per person, which is simply ridiculous. There are many more beautiful churches available to enter for free. It is also possible to enter Westminster Abbey for free if you wish to attend a church service later in the day - an option I would highly recommend.

The entrance fee comes with an audio guide, and access to more areas than at the church service. The audio guide helped to identify where some people were buried, but it didn't tell you who those people were, what they did, or what their stories were.

Photography is forbidden at all times, even when you pay the admission fee, and the "guards" are aggressive at preventing anyone from taking pictures, placing their hands over peoples cameras, or aggressively stepping in front of them to block the pictures.

We had to wait in line for about 20 minutes before getting in. After getting to the front of the line, we paid our admission fee, received our audio guide, and started the audio tour. The tour took about 90 minutes to get through. It consisted of narration that directed you through the church and told you who was buried where. The tour took us through most of the small chapels in the church, including most of the ones behind the altar. These small chapels are not accessible during the free church service in the evenings, but I didn't get much out of them. There are people buried there, but for the most part they just contain more coffins and memorials.

There is also a really small museum area off of one of the cloisters. It contains some small crowns and artifacts, and takes about 5-10 minutes to walk through. It had a sign saying admission was free, but that likely means admission is only free with the cost of admission.

The low rating is due to the extreme cost of admission. There is some historical significance to Westminster Abbey, so it is worth seeing, but in my opinion the best way to see it is for free at the church service.

The Church Service (Evensong)

Seating is performed on a first-come-first-seated basis, so arrive 15-20 minutes before the service for the best seats. If you get there early enough you can go right to the front. After the service, while people are filing out, there is some time when you can listen to the organ music and look around.

During this time after the service, there were many more people taking pictures than during touring times. The guards were still there trying to get people to stop taking pictures, but many people took them anyway.

The choir was a good quality choir, but the acoustics weren't great from where we were sitting off to the side. We arrived just a couple minutes before the service began, so we had some of the worst seats.