Grace Cathedral

I’m excited to share that Grace Cathedral joyfully reopens to visitors on Wednesday, March 16, after closing exactly two years for the pandemic. The cathedral will be joining major cathedrals around the world in offering an elevated visitor experience much like a wonderfully guided museum experience, though specific to the amazing history, values and community of Grace Cathedral. While the cathedral has been open for services and events since last summer, we are now welcoming sightseeing visitors and friends in the community to visit the cathedral outside of services and events, on Monday through Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm. We can’t wait to have you back!

During the pandemic, Dean Malcolm Young worked with a group of trustees, volunteers and staff who helped us reimagine Grace Cathedral through the eyes of the thousands of people who visit the cathedral every year during non-service times. The result was a vision for a professionally managed and curated visitor experience, along with an eventual path to membership for people who are not part of Grace’s congregation. 

Last fall, we hired museum membership expert Julie Knight, and she hit the ground running to bring this vision to life in under five months. This week, we’re reopening with self-guided and docent-led tour experiences to help visitors more fully appreciate the architecture, artifacts, artistic offerings and history of the cathedral. We hope that this will foster new appreciation and awareness of the cathedral’s history in many important cultural, civic and spiritual movements throughout San Francisco, the country and the world. Later this spring, we will offer a new cultural membership program.

We’re opening with the Highlights Tour – featuring 18 artifacts in 12 professionally curated touch screen stations. Visitors may take a docent-led or self-guided tour. More themed tours will be available this summer. We’re heartened that Grace’s inclusive values and the beauty of our space will shine into the world in this new way.

Here are some of the details for planning your next visit:

The cathedral will be open to sightseeing visitors Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. General admission tickets are $12. Seniors 65 and older are $10. Youth and young adults between the ages of 12-22 are $10, and children 11 and under are free. Visitors can purchase timed tickets for self-guided or docent-led tours, here.  We welcome members of Grace Cathedral’s congregation and congregants throughout the Diocese of California to visit free of charge. Because we will close occasionally for special services and events, we encourage you to check our website first.

The cathedral is open to all on Sundays for services and general viewing without fee and will always be free and open to all for church services and prayer.

We’re excited to welcome everyone back, and to offer a deeper experience of Grace Cathedral. 

Along with many friends in the Grace Cathedral community, the first amazing cathedral sermon I heard this year was from my colleague, the Rev. Canon Jude Harmon, when he preached about the complex family dynamics in Luke’s story of Jesus’s being “lost” in the temple. I related to the themes of an all-knowing teenager, parents who were terrified about a missing child, and the image of a holy, yet imperfect family. It felt so good – in this year of being improbably cocooned with my husband and college-aged daughter – to be reminded that we are doing the work of being closer to God through the work of being together.

Jude’s words were so uplifting and reassuring that I did something silly right after church. I texted him two pictures: one of Michelangelo’s perfect Holy Family and another of my family, posing in our sweatpants with the family dog on the porch. Blessedly, Jude understood and hearted both. Acknowledging the spiritual practice of loving your family was a good way to start the new year.

Today is another opportunity for me to reflect on this story and its meaning. During the twelve months of the pandemic, relationships have been at the center of what has been good, thriving from every moment of empathy. A new lens on the hardships of the world has urged me into a deeper kindness. While I can’t wait for large gatherings again, our pause has allowed for more connected conversations with family members, colleagues and friends. Even though we go to church virtually, the practice of being together to pray and learn on Sunday seems to help me with everything.

A new understanding of the Holy Family is alive for me in this Lenten season. As Jude said last January, God could have saved the world in a much simpler way. But She insisted that it would be rich, complex and sometimes messy – a source of joy and connection unlike anything else, providing the clarity that we are really not alone.