Plans at Cologne Cathedral to start charging visitor fees have sparked an outcry, with critics warning against limiting access to the majestic gothic building to the well-off.

Officials said this month that the cathedral, the tallest twin-spired church in the world and a tourist magnet in Germany’s fourth largest city, could only be maintained with a new revenue stream.

They announced a scheme to start selling tickets from July. The price of admission to the Kölner Dom, from which worshippers would be exempt, is estimated to come in at €12 to €15 (£10 to £13) – a cost seen as prohibitive to many.

Architect Barbara Schock-Werner, who heads the non-profit Zentral-Dombau-Verein zu Köln (ZDV) association, which supports the cathedral’s conservationand has more than 19,000 members, said anything above €10 would be irresponsible.

“I would find that unfair to the people of Cologne and the surrounding region,” she told the local newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. “If only the well-off can afford to go into a church, I think that’s socially unjust.”

Schock-Werner, who oversaw conservation and restoration work on the building until her retirement in 2012, said it was “very, very regrettable” that Germany’s most famous church would soon be charging tourists an entrance fee at all.

“There must also be non-commercial spaces. People shouldn’t have to pay for everything – least of all for visiting a church,” she said.

Inflation and high staffing costs for 170 employees have driven up the price of the upkeep of the building, the cathedral’s management said.

Meanwhile, cash reserves used to plug financing gaps in recent years have largely dried up, in part because fee-paying visits to the cathedral’s 157-metre towers and treasure chamber were halted for long periods during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Church officials have made savings, such as reducing staff by attrition, but the numbers are still not adding up.

The maintenance of the cathedral costs €16m per year while income only reached just under €14m in 2024 – a shortfall which has persisted since 2019, according to the church’s website.

People entering the nave to attend services, light candles or pray in most areas will be exempt from the new admission fee.

The cathedral’s dean, Guido Assmann, told German news agency dpa that tourists accounted for 99% of visitors.

Construction of the cathedral began in 1248 and was completed in 1880. It joined the list of Unesco world heritage sites in 1996 and attracts about six million visitors each year.

The building towers over Cologne’s main railway station on the Rhine River and is the most recognisable symbol on the urban skyline.

It stands as a reminder of resilience in a city that was subjected to sustained allied bombing during the second world war, including the RAF’s first 1,000-bomber raid in 1942. Though badly damaged, the cathedral remained standing amid a landscape of rubble.

Custom-designed pixelated stained-glass windows by painter Gerhard Richter were installed in 2007. Sunlight through the 20-metre windows, which are themselves a tourist draw, casts brilliant shadows on the mosaic floors.

Richter, 94, told dpa he was in favour of visitor fees at the church, noting that other great cathedrals such as Milan’s had long collected such revenues.

In Germany most churches are freely accessible to the public, although there are exceptions. Berlin Cathedral charges €15 for a standard viewing ticket, while major cathedrals in other European cities are far more expensive, such as Sagrada Família in Barcelona at €26 and Vienna’s St Stephen’s Cathedral at €29.

Another major European tourist attraction, Rome’s Trevi fountain, has pivoted to charging visitors. The aim of the €2 entry fee introduced last month is to help authorities manage the crowds and pay for the monument’s upkeep. More than 10 million people visited the Trevi in 2025 alone.