CNN has offered viewers a limited look inside the renovated Salt Lake Temple as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints prepares to distribute tickets for its six-month public open house. According to a Church Newsroom release, the media outlet toured the temple in March and published its report on August 28, just days before reservations open on September 1.
The free public tours will begin April 5, 2027, and run through October 1, 2027, with reservations strongly encouraged. Visitors can reserve up to six tickets beginning at 11 a.m. Utah time, and the Church of Jesus Christ will also offer virtual tours online.
CNN took cameras through the six-spired temple during a hard hat tour that highlighted its reconstructed interior and extensive seismic reinforcement. The report also included interviews with a Utah business leader, a university professor, an author and an art historian.
Elder Matthew S. Holland, Executive Director of the Church Communication Department, described the open house as a rare opportunity for people throughout the world. “This is such a unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for … the rest of the world to come and see what for more than a century was for Church members only,” he said.
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What Visitors Will See Inside
The Salt Lake Temple on March 24, 2026.The Church closed the Salt Lake Temple in December 2019 to renovate its interior, reinforce its foundation and protect the 187-million-pound building against earthquakes. After the public tours conclude, the Church will again reserve the temple for eligible Church members who participate in sacred ordinances and worship.
Unlike a cathedral built around one expansive sanctuary, the temple contains a series of smaller rooms used for instruction, ordinances, prayer and reflection. Elder Holland told CNN that visitors should expect “more of an individual journey through rooms of instruction and commitment and worship.”
The temple contains rooms for baptisms performed on behalf of deceased ancestors, sealings that unite couples for eternity and endowment ceremonies that provide spiritual instruction. Church members wear white clothing during these ordinances as a reminder that they have entered a holy place.
The Celestial Room serves as a quiet setting for prayer and reflection rather than a place where Church members perform ceremonies. A photograph from May showed crews assembling a chandelier inside the renovated room, while another image showed newly installed stained glass depicting Jesus Christ in the temple’s north entrance building.
CNN characterized the exterior as resembling a fairy-tale castle because of its white stonework and dramatic spires. The building’s stone carvings include symbols of the all-seeing eye of God, while a golden statue of the angel Moroni stands atop its highest spire and blows a trumpet heralding the Second Coming.
A Larger Interior and Stronger Foundation
The Salt Lake Temple on May 26, 2026.Construction crews added a 100,000-square-foot underground wing that provides more space for temple operations. The expansion includes nine additional sealing rooms, a second baptismal font, redesigned corridors, new elevators, improved lighting and more video screens.
Like the original baptismal font, the new font rests on 12 sculpted oxen that represent the 12 tribes of Israel. Workers also restored and reinstalled the original cast-iron oxen supporting the east baptismal font in April 2025.
The seismic work addresses the risks posed by Salt Lake City’s location on an active fault line. The temple survived a bombing, a tornado and a magnitude 5.7 earthquake in 2020 that shook its walls and knocked the trumpet from the Angel Moroni statue.
Crews reinforced the thick granite walls with vertical cables extending from the towers to the building’s base. They also constructed a new foundation using 98 rubber-and-steel base isolators designed to function like shock absorbers and protect the temple even if the ground moves five feet.
The renovation also changed parts of the original interior, prompting criticism from some observers concerned about the loss of historic features. The reconfigured floor plan removed a grand staircase and several hand-painted murals, including a Garden of Eden mural created by a Latter-day Saint artist who studied in Paris.
Church officials said the new configuration prevented crews from saving some historic elements, but workers photographed the artifacts and added that documentation to the Church History Library. The Church preserved other original features, including Tiffany stained-glass windows, and restored additional elements to reflect their Victorian-era appearance.
From Pioneer Construction to a Global Open House
The Salt Lake Temple on March 24, 2026.Church President Brigham Young selected the temple’s location in 1847, only days after Latter-day Saint pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley. He presided over the groundbreaking but died before workers completed the building, which took 40 years to construct and was dedicated in 1893.
Workers built the temple without modern construction equipment and carved its granite about 20 miles from downtown Salt Lake City. Elder Holland called the project “a remarkable engineering feat in its day.”
The temple stands at the center of Temple Square, a complex that also includes an assembly hall, a visitor center, a reflecting pool and the domed Salt Lake Tabernacle. CNN identified Temple Square as Utah’s most-visited site, surpassing the state’s five national parks.
Matthew Bowman, a professor at Claremont Graduate University who specializes in Latter-day Saint studies, compared the temple’s upward-reaching design to the architecture of Roman Catholic cathedrals. “Temples are a space where heaven touches earth,” he said, adding that the Salt Lake Temple succeeds in creating the feeling of being drawn toward heaven.
Terryl L. Givens, a Brigham Young University research fellow and author, connected Latter-day Saints’ interest in the open house to the temple’s familiar profile, its four decades of construction and its place in the center of the faith. CNN reported that the building has remained closed to the general public since its dedication 133 years ago.
Millions of Visitors Expected in 2027
The Church expects to offer tours from morning to night seven days a week throughout the open house. Organizers project that as many as 25,000 visitors will enter the building each day, bringing the total attendance to more than 4 million people.
Salt Lake City tourism officials estimate that the event will generate $300 million in new spending downtown. Derek Miller, president of the Salt Lake Chamber and the Downtown Alliance, sees the anticipated crowds as preparation for the 2034 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
“This is sort of our practice run for that,” Miller told CNN. “We want people to see a vibrant city that has a lot to offer.”
Temple Square will also host new exhibits, live concerts and video projections on the Tabernacle ceiling during the celebration. Those activities will accompany the opportunity to enter the temple before it resumes its religious function following the open house.
Elder Holland said the Church wants visitors to understand why Latter-day Saints regard temples as central to their faith. “We’re opening these doors to everyone because we believe the temple has a message that’s relevant,” he said.
“It’s sacred to us as a people of faith, but it’s also something that we believe offers peace and promise to all,” Elder Holland continued. For six months in 2027, visitors from around the world will have the opportunity to see that sacred space for themselves.
What part of the Salt Lake Temple Celebration are you looking forward to most? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Holly Wallace is a writer and storyteller drawn to meaningful questions and overlooked details. Her work explores Latter-day Saint life and culture through faithful inquiry, inviting readers to pause, consider, and engage more deeply with what matters most.
