Cathedral or Abbey?

The short answer

Two famous churches share the name Westminster, and it is easy to search for one and find the other. They stand in different parts of the City of Westminster, belong to different churches and were built in different centuries. The cathedral is Catholic and Byzantine in style, with a striped brick front, domes and a single tall bell tower. The Abbey is Anglican and Gothic, with stone walls and twin western towers. Only the cathedral hosts the LUMINISCENCE projection show, which makes the distinction a practical one. A booking made for the wrong church costs an evening, so it is worth a few minutes to be sure. Everything below is there to make that choice easy.

Westminster Cathedral in brief

Cardinal Herbert Vaughan, the third Archbishop of Westminster, drove the project, and the foundation stone was blessed on 29 June 1895. The architect was John Francis Bentley, who chose a Byzantine design in brick over a Gothic one in stone, partly because brick was cheaper and quicker. Building was complete in 1903, and the cathedral was consecrated in June 1910 once its debt was cleared. Inside are over 100 varieties of marble, mosaics in the finished chapels, Eric Gill's Stations of the Cross and a Rood cross thirty feet high. It is the seat of the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, and Bentley resisted iron, so its three great domes are concrete. Gill's Stations were dedicated on Good Friday 1918, and Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent builds its finale on the bell tower.

Read next: Bentley's Byzantine design

Westminster Abbey in brief

Westminster Abbey is a Church of England church. Its own website calls it the coronation church since 1066, says Benedictine monks founded it and says worship takes place every day. Edward the Confessor ordered the consecration of its abbey church in 1065, and Elizabeth I re-founded it as a collegiate church in 1560, making it a royal peculiar answerable directly to the sovereign. The present Gothic church was begun under Henry III in 1245. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it is not a cathedral today. This guide takes no view of what to see inside it, and the Abbey's own pages are the place to plan a visit.

How to tell them apart by sight

From the street, the two could hardly differ more. The cathedral is a broad church of red brick banded with white stone, with domes and a single campanile that its own pages give as 284 feet. The Abbey is built in the Gothic manner of stone, with pointed windows and a pair of towers on the west front. If the building in front of you is striped red and white, you are at the cathedral. The cathedral's front is also easier to see than it once was. Mansion blocks hid it from Victoria Street until the piazza was opened up in the 1970s, which is why older photographs show a very different setting.

Why the two names collide

Westminster is the name of the district, of the Abbey and of the Catholic archdiocese. When Pope Pius IX restored the Catholic hierarchy in 1850, the new metropolitan see took the name Westminster in place of the older title London, to avoid contention. When Cardinal Vaughan later planned his cathedral, one of his three requirements was not to compete with the Gothic grandeur of the Abbey, a near neighbour. A Byzantine church in brick was part of the answer. The two buildings therefore share a name by history, not by accident, and each carries the word Westminster on signs, maps and booking sites. The result is two neighbours with one name and two very different faces.

Where each one stands

The cathedral is on Victoria Street, London SW1P 1LT, close to Victoria station, which the booking page puts at about five minutes' walk. The cathedral lists Victoria and St James's Park as its nearest Tube stations. The Abbey stands in another part of Westminster, at Dean's Yard, near the Houses of Parliament. They are close enough to be confused on a map and far enough apart that going to the wrong one costs you a trip. Check the address on your confirmation before you set out, and let a route planner choose the route to the street named there. Do not rely on the word Westminster alone. A route planner given the full street address will route you correctly.

What you can do at each

The cathedral says it is free to enter and open every day, with daily Mass sung by its choir, which it describes as the only Catholic cathedral choir in the world to sing daily Mass and Vespers. A lift runs to a viewing gallery in its campanile. The Abbey says visitors can book tickets online, and it lists services such as Evensong and Morning Prayer. Both are working churches, so visiting arrangements and services change, and each publishes its own on its own website. This guide quotes no hours or prices, so check the day you plan to go with the church itself. Each church is also a place of worship first, so expect services to shape the day.

A four-point check before you book

Four small checks settle the question, and they take under a minute. Run through them before you pay, and again when the confirmation arrives, because the booking site's page for the cathedral show should name the same venue each time. A mismatch on any one of them is a reason to stop and look again, since a ticket for the wrong building cannot be used. The checks below are the ones that matter most for a visitor on a short stay.

• The venue is named Westminster Cathedral, not Westminster Abbey.
• The address is Victoria Street, London SW1P 1LT.
• The show is called LUMINISCENCE and is described as a 360° projection concert.
• The nearest station is Victoria, not Westminster.

Which one hosts the show

LUMINISCENCE is performed inside Westminster Cathedral. The Abbey has no part in it, and neither church runs this website. The producers present it as a 360° video projection concert, with the Lux Aeterna choir singing live and Hugh Bonneville voicing a script by Tim Whitnall. The projection works on the cathedral's bare upper domes and its mosaics, which suits a building that was left unfinished inside. A ticket is a seat in the cathedral for about 50 minutes on the date you choose. The tickets guide explains the seating, access and the cancellation terms on the booking site. Note that the nearest Tube stations the cathedral lists are Victoria and St James's Park.

Read next: Luminiscence tickets

If you meant to visit the Abbey

This site covers the cathedral show only, so it cannot help you book Westminster Abbey. The Abbey's own website is the place to start, with its visiting information and its services. Many visitors see both buildings on the same trip, because the cathedral is free to enter by day and the two lie within the same part of London. If your plans are fixed on the Abbey, simply do not book the cathedral show. If they include both, treat them as two separate outings with separate tickets, separate opening arrangements and separate addresses. Do not rely on search results alone, since both churches carry the name.

Who this isn't for

Readers whose confirmation already names the Abbey can stop here, because that visit is a separate matter. It is not a history of either church, and it does not cover what is inside the Abbey. If you want a full account of the Abbey, read its own pages. If you want more on the cathedral's design, the Bentley guide on this site goes further, and the guide to the unfinished interior explains what the show actually lights. It is also not a guide to services, which both churches publish on their own sites and which change from week to week.