“So,” said my friend cheerfully: “We’re going up there”. I followed the line of her extended finger from floor level to a pin-prick in the roof of St Paul’s Cathedral.
“Not the whispering gallery,” she said, although that was a stopping point on the way. Not the Stone Gallery either which is suspended at 53 metres above the cathedral floor.
We were going beyond that, through what, from ground level, looked like a camera obscura lens hole in the cupola. It’s the Golden Gallery, a tiny circular balcony perched 85 metres above the ground, atop the very dome of the Church of England’s very finest cathedral.
But first we had to shuffle through the queues that had built up in front of the admission desks. Entry to St Paul’s used to be free and still is if you attend a service. But tourists pay now, although the ticket of €19 includes admission to the crypt, all of the galleries, an audio tour and the Oculus film experience.
Turning down the multimedia headphones in favour of awed gawping, we wandered over the beautiful inlaid floor of Christopher Wren’s architectural masterpiece. There’s been a cathedral here at the highest point of the city for over 1,400 years, but Christopher Wren designed the latest incarnation after the Great Fire of London and it was built between 1675 and 1710.
It’s hard to do justice to the genius of Wren’s creation. The building is on an awe-inspiring scale; the sheer enormity of the place is staggering, especially when you consider the tools available for building at the time.
The attention to detail is endless too. Even the most innocuous sections of the lower ceiling and inner dome are clad in a dazzle of gilt and rose mosaic, waves of tile segueing into paintings of angels that stretch stories high. It gives new meaning to the word grandiose and evensong here is enough to send a tingle down the spine of even the most hardened atheist.
To really appreciate the majesty of St Paul’s, the epic scale of its conception, it’s not enough to wander around the Nave, the Quire and the Transepts on the ground floor; you need to climb the stairs to the galleries.
As my friend began striding up the spiral staircase with me trailing along behind, she confided that on her last visit, her legs had nearly given out. It wasn’t long before I could sympathise. There are precisely 1,161 steps to the very top. These begin as a wide and inviting spiral staircase but they get progressively narrower and end on a very tight metal corkscrew of a stepladder.
But first, there’s the Whispering Gallery and its acoustic trickery. A woman right in front of us baulked at the dizzying drop over the rails, leaving her partner to go in alone.
This was unfortunate for him because in truth, you need to take a friend and preferably come at a quiet time to enjoy this gallery (admission starts at 8.30am).
One friend stands at each side of the round balcony, leans into the curling wall and whispers a message. That little whisper will carry perfectly to your partner on the other side. We spent a merry 10 minutes whispering sarcastic ripostes before the gallery filled up and the sound waves stopped playing ball.
Another 376 steps took us to the Stone Gallery. From here, there’s a fabulous view of the floor of the cathedral and the art that adorns every wall. Every crevice is space for another masterpiece, some of them sadly blocked by stacked tables and stored chairs; even St Paul’s has to put the excess furniture somewhere, and with the crypt crammed with tombs of the worthy and famous, only the ‘attics’ are left.
We then climbed into the bluish dome itself and the wood and stone steps gave way to a metal staircase, spiralling up the cone-shaped brick support wall that slopes upwards, bearing the 65,000 tons that the dome weighs.
Evensong here is enough to send a tingle down the spine of even the most hardened atheist
Eventually, we reached a small plate glass window, about 15cm squared. This was the tiny hole that my friend had pointed at nearly a hundred metres below on the floor of the cathedral. Directly beneath lay an intricately inlaid four-pointed star, perfectly aligned with the centre of the dome.
More stairs, before finally, we burst out of a small door into a sudden rush of sun and wind. We were on the narrow ledge that encircles the top of the dome and if I hadn’t been gasping already from the climb, the view would have taken my breath away.
We had a clear day and all the major sights showed beautifully: the Gherkin, Canary Wharf, timeless Tower Bridge, the icicle spikes of the Shard, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre looking appropriately middle-aged for such a modern city, the Tate Modern, the fairground ride that is the London Eye and the Thames snaking under Waterloo Bridge and away.
It’s fascinating too to look at the dome from above. St Paul’s is so iconic, we take its bluish dome for granted, but to see the lead-clad timber that gives it this colour, to be able to virtually touch the smooth metal, is something special.
Wren came up with an ingenious scheme to distribute the weight of this cupola and the lantern above, with the brick cone underneath spreading the weight and being reinforced with a wrought-iron chain to stop it slipping and cracking. As the gallery became crowded, we had to descend again; my friend was right about the legs.
Back on the cathedral floor, the only place to go was deeper; down to the crypts and the tombs of British Greats such as Nelson, Wellington, Wren himself and memorials to the likes of William Blake. The only tomb to survive the 1666 fire is that of poet and clergyman John Donne. Interpretation on the walls takes you on a gentle stroll of history, and St Paul’s place in it.
Queen Elizabeth I came to give thanks here after the Spanish Armada was defeated, Churchill’s funeral was held here in 1965 and Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in the vaulting interior in 1981.
If your legs, heart or psyche rule you out of the climb, you can see what you were missing in the Oculus film room in the crypt. There’s a cafe down here too, but it was a little claustrophobic for my liking. We escaped back into the sunshine, down to the Thames for coffee with entertainment from the performers at the Embankment. And St Paul’s continued to watch over the city as it has for centuries, even while London has grown up around it like an untamed forest, to dwarf this majestic church.
St Paul’s Cathedral is open Monday to Saturday 8.30am-4pm. On Sunday the cathedral is open for worship only. Check the cathedral calendar before you visit. The nearest underground is St Paul’s on the Central Line. Mansion House, Cannon Street and Blackfriars stations on the District and Circle Lines are within walking distance.