City: Durham, NC

Category: Tours & Attractions

Telephone: (919) 681-9414

Address: 1 Chapel Dr., Duke University

Description: Approaching Duke Chapel for the first, or even the 50th, time can be truly breathtaking. As you turn onto Chapel Drive, your eyes fill with the Gothic façade, and its 210-foot spires seem to reach for heaven. The interior is just as grand. Stone statues gaze down from the carved portal. Light filters through the stained-glass faces of Biblical figures on 77 brilliantly colored windows. Three separate pipe organs fill the cathedral with sound. Three members of the Duke family are entombed in Duke Chapel: James B. Duke, Washington Duke, and Benjamin Duke. Memorial plaques honor members of the Duke family who passed more recently, including Doris Duke. Constructed between 1930 and 1935 at a cost of $2.3 million, Duke Chapel was the last building completed on the university’s West Campus. Its designer was Philadelphia architect Julian Abele, among the first renowned African-American architects. He took inspiration for the neo-Gothic chapel from English cathedrals and other American university chapels.Sunday worship services at 11 a.m. are open to the public, as are the Thursday evening vespers services held at 5:15 p.m. during the school year. The Duke Chapel Choir’s annual presentations of Handel’s Messiah offer a chance to experience the cathedral in all its grandeur. Otherwise, the chapel is open to visitors daily with no admission cost. Make sure to call ahead to see if a wedding is scheduled, especially on the weekends. The chapel is a popular wedding site, and visitors are not allowed into private events.