A new, immersive Temple Square Visitors’ Center will open next month and provide a unique, interactive experience to millions who arrive at the centerpiece of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The center will offer the public the first walk-through experience of a temple — complete with replicas of a celestial room and baptismal font — outside of the generally brief open houses held right after a temple is completed or renovated.
The visitors’ center also has a remarkable new, automated cutaway model of the temple. When you enter the room, the exterior walls of the temple model are up. After a brief introduction, the walls slowly drop to reveal the inside of the temple.
“The church is an open church,” said President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, acting president of the church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. “I think it is wonderful that we have now this openness of showing what is happening so no one can feel that we’re keeping anything in the hidden, because there’s nothing to hide.
“It’s only sacred, and we hope it will be honored and respected.”
President Uchtdorf gave the Deseret News and other media a sneak-peek tour of the center’s two wings and underground replica rooms on Monday morning.
It’s unlike anything the Latter-day Saints have done before.
“You may think you have been to a visitors’ center experience with us before, and I’m going to tell you, this is not that,” said President Emily Belle Freeman, Young Women general president. “This is a visitors’ center experience like you have never had before.”
Here’s what you need to know:
- Free reservations: The center will open on May 18. You can visit the center any time, but for the 30-minute “Inside the Temple Tour” experience with the replica rooms, make free reservations at Ticketing.ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
- Iconic exhibits: One ground-level wing is the new home of the Christus statue. A feature of Temple Square since 1967, the statue now stands in front of huge bay windows with the Salt Lake Temple in the background. The other ground level wing houses the new cutaway scale model of the temple.
- Walk-through replicas: The lower level beneath the two wings features full-sized walk-through replicas of sacred temple ordinance rooms, including the baptismal, instruction, sealing and celestial rooms.
- Art-glass windows: New stained glass depicts scenes from the life of Christ, including his ministry to children as recorded in 3 Nephi 17 and his appearance to Mary Magdalene.
- Unobstructed views: The two ground-level wings are pavilions encased in glass with stunning direct sightlines of the Salt Lake Temple’s south side.
- New webpage, app, virtual tours: On Monday, the church also relaunched its webpage, TempleSquare.org. A new Temple Square app is coming. In October, digital virtual tours of completed spaces of the renovated temple and new visitors’ center will be available online, President Uchtdorf said.
The theme for both is “Rejoice in Christ,” he said.
“This morning I dedicated this visitors’ center and consecrated it to the purpose of proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ to all those who come,” said President Uchtdorf, who chairs the church’s Salt Lake Temple open house committee.
One of the highlights for many visitors will come when a short introductory film ends at the start of the replica-room tour. The screen parts to reveal a replica door to the temple. Then the tour goes through the door and into a replica temple lobby.
“It’s a magical moment,” said Marc Epstein, vice president of development for THG Creative, which designed the visitors’ center under church direction. “It’s that kind of dramatic moment that can really create an emotional feeling with a person that really does stay with them.”
The goal is the same as the temple in Latter-day Saint belief, to point people to Jesus Christ, President Freeman said.
“I hope you feel the reverence,” she said. “I hope you learn Jesus Christ is the center of our faith.”
President Uchtdorf said the church expects 5 million people to participate in a six-month public open house for the Salt Lake Temple in 2027. It will be the first time in history that the church has invited the world to tour the inside of the iconic, pioneer-era temple.
The temple and Temple Square closed for major renovations on Dec. 30, 2019. The church will rededicate the temple at the end of 2027, and it will be closed to the general public again.
The new center will help the church continue to show visitors what it looks like on the inside.
The celebration of the completed renovation of the Salt Lake Temple will include the public open house that will run every day from April 5, 2027, through Oct. 1, 2027. The process for obtaining free reservations to tour the renovated temple will begin on Sept. 1, 2026.
The new visitors’ center stands close to the base of the massive temple. It has two glass-enclosed pavilions at ground level with a large underground space, built on the plot where the South Visitors’ Center previously stood. That center was demolished in early 2020.
The church hired outside professionals to improve the visitors’ center experience. THG Creative, a themed-experience design company from Pasadena, California, oversaw the visitors’ center project.
Midwest Studios of Indianapolis created the temple model, which uses 3D printed elements throughout and has multiple levels that rise and lower to help visitors see inside and better understand the temple.
“The church wanted us to look at it as impartial observer,” said THG’s Epstein. “They wanted us to determine how they could tell this story in a way that would be interesting and get people to understand what happens in the temple, understand what happens as a member of the faith in the temple.”
Naturally, demand will be high for the Inside the Temple Tour at the visitors’ center. By mid-afternoon on Monday, only four time slots remained unreserved for opening day on May 18.
The church is paying Salt Lake City over $2 million to shut down a block of the street along the north side of the temple, another block along the west side and portions of three other adjacent streets will also close:
- One block of North Temple between West Temple and Main Street.
- One block of West Temple between North Temple and South Temple.
- A portion of North Temple between 200 West and West Temple Street.
- A portion of West Temple between 200 North and North Temple Street.
- A portion of South Temple between West Temple and Main.
The goal is safety against bad actors, said President Uchtdorf, who met with Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall and others on planning.
“We have to learn from the mistakes of others,” he said, mentioning attacks in other places. He said the city and church don’t want the open house to become “a soft target.”
“We have to make sure these streets are closed so we have an enclosed, secure area,” he said. “We’re not closing many streets, just the opposite. We’re opening up many streets here and beautifying them because community leaders have decided we pitch in, we help to beautify the city, that when the open house is over and when the Olympics come, they will be even more surprised how beautiful the city is.”
President Uchtdorf began his remarks standing next to the Christus statue. He called it humbling for a man called to be a special witness of Jesus Christ.
“I love my Jesus,” he said.
The temple is meant to connect all of God’s children — all people, in Latter-day Saint theology — to Jesus Christ and his plan to bring them home again after this life.
“We hope,” President Uchtdorf said, “the world will come.”
