Duke Chapel

The Duke Chapel is the architectural centrepiece of Duke University's West Campus — a hundred-and-thirty-metre Gothic limestone tower visible from across western Durham. Modelled on Canterbury Cathedral, with seventy-seven stained-glass windows and a fifty-bell carillon, it is one of the most striking university buildings in the United States.

The chapel is open daily and free to enter. The interior is best seen in the late afternoon when the western windows are at their most colourful. Sunday services are open to the public; the carillon plays daily at five. Free organ recitals run several times a week during term.

things to do sight church
A story
The Duke family's fortune from American Tobacco built the chapel between 1930 and 1932 — quarried entirely from a Pennsylvania volcanic stone shipped down by rail. The chief architect, Julian Abele, was the first African American graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's school of architecture; he designed most of the West Campus, although his name barely appeared in the official records of his lifetime.