Temple Square is the spiritual and architectural heart of Salt Lake City, and regardless of your relationship with religion, the craftsmanship on display here commands respect. The Salt Lake Temple — the centerpiece of the complex — took 40 years to build, from 1853 to 1893, and every block of granite in its walls was quarried from Little Cottonwood Canyon, 20 miles to the southeast, and hauled to the site by oxcart. The walls are up to nine feet thick. The tallest spire rises 210 feet. The entire structure was built by pioneers who had crossed the continent on foot and arrived in an uninhabited desert valley with essentially nothing. That they built a cathedral of this scale and ambition under those circumstances is remarkable by any standard.
The temple itself is not open to the general public — only members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with a temple recommend may enter — but the surrounding 35-acre complex is open to everyone and welcomes millions of visitors each year. The grounds are immaculately maintained, with gardens, fountains, reflecting pools, and walkways that make the complex feel like an oasis in the center of the city. In December, the square is decorated with hundreds of thousands of Christmas lights that draw crowds from across the region, and the display has become one of the most beloved holiday traditions in the Intermountain West.
The Tabernacle, an oval-shaped assembly hall completed in 1867, is an architectural marvel in its own right. Its domed roof spans 150 feet without a single interior support column — an engineering achievement that was extraordinary for its time and remains impressive today. The roof structure uses a lattice truss system held together with wooden pegs and rawhide, techniques borrowed from bridge building. The acoustics inside are legendary. A pin dropped at the podium can be heard in the back row, 170 feet away, and the hall was designed specifically to carry the human voice to every seat without amplification. Guided tours demonstrate the acoustics, and the effect is genuinely startling.
The Tabernacle is home to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir — now officially known as The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square — one of the most celebrated choral groups in the world. The choir has been performing since 1847, making it one of the oldest continuously active musical organizations in the United States. Their weekly broadcast, Music and the Spoken Word, has been running since 1929 and is the longest-running continuous network broadcast in American radio and television history. Visitors can attend rehearsals on Thursday evenings and the live broadcast on Sunday mornings, both free of charge. Hearing 360 voices fill that acoustically perfect space is an experience that transcends denominational boundaries.
The Conference Center, completed in 2000 across the street from the original square, seats 21,000 people and hosts the church's semiannual General Conference. The building is enormous but designed to blend with the surrounding cityscape, and its rooftop garden — planted with native grasses and wildflowers — offers panoramic views of the city and the Wasatch Mountains. The garden is open to visitors and is one of the best free viewpoints in downtown Salt Lake City.
The Family History Library, also part of the complex, houses the largest genealogical collection in the world. The church has been systematically collecting and digitizing birth, death, marriage, and census records from around the globe for over a century, and the resulting database — available free to the public both in the library and online through FamilySearch — contains billions of records spanning hundreds of years and virtually every country on Earth. Genealogy enthusiasts travel here from around the world to research their family histories, and the volunteer staff will help anyone — member or not — navigate the collections.
The complex also includes two visitor centers with exhibits on church history and beliefs, presented by volunteer missionaries who are invariably friendly and well-prepared. The exhibits are informational rather than high-pressure, though visitors should be aware that the missionaries may offer to share their faith. A polite no thank you is always respected.
Temple Square sits at the intersection of South Temple and Main Street in the center of downtown Salt Lake City, surrounded by restaurants, hotels, and the City Creek Center shopping complex. It is walkable from most downtown hotels and easily accessible by TRAX light rail. The square is free to enter, free to tour, and free to simply walk through on your way somewhere else — which many Salt Lake City residents do daily, using the paths through the gardens as shortcuts between downtown blocks.
The complex is undergoing a major renovation that began in 2020, and portions of the grounds may be affected by construction during your visit. The temple itself is being seismically retrofitted — a massive engineering project that involves lifting the entire structure, reinforcing its foundation, and installing a base isolation system to protect it from earthquakes. The project reflects the same long-term thinking that characterized the original construction — building something intended to last for centuries, using the best available technology, regardless of cost or timeline.
Whatever your beliefs, Temple Square rewards a visit. The architecture is extraordinary. The gardens are beautiful. The history is fascinating. And the sheer ambition of the project — a community of desert pioneers building a granite cathedral by hand over four decades — is a story that resonates far beyond the boundaries of any single faith.
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