St. Paul's Cathedral, the Long Version

Today a friend and I took the 90 minute tour of St. Paul's Cathedral. It was only my second time in the Cathedral, the first being the 2009 Thanksgiving service (which is held annually on, yes, Thanksgiving and rather interesting to attend if you are an American - or non-American - in London on Thanksgiving). The 90 minute tours are offered for free as part of the price of admission, however they are only given at 10am, 11am, 1pm and 2pm and supposedly to a limited number of people each time. We arrived about 10:50 and had no problem joining the 11am tour.

The tours do last almost the full 90 minutes but we saw a fair amount of the Cathedral including the crypt, the geometric staircase (apparently made famous in Harry Potter) and the quire (the spelling given on the website) which is off limits unless you are on a tour. We learned quite a bit about the Cathedral's history and saw famous art, memorials, architectural details and were given the meaning and description behind the Cathedral's various inner parts. We also saw a statue that survived the Great Fire of 1666 and one area of the wall left intentionally dirty during the restoration in the early 2000's. The tour guide was perfectly entertaining and easy to understand.

Since I haven't done the audio tour I can't compare it to walking around with an actual guide, but I would recommend the guided tour. You obviously do have the ability to interact and question the (human) guide, something you can't do with an audio guide. Assuming you have 90 minutes to spare inside the Cathedral, then the tour is worth your time. It does cost 15 pounds to get inside St. Paul's so why not get your money's worth while you are at it.