Religious Sites: Explore Temples, Churches, Mosques and Sacred Complexes
Explore more than 6,500 historic religious sites, including temples, cathedrals, monasteries, mosques, madrasas, synagogues and timber-built shrines. The collection spans Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Its standing interiors and extensive archaeological complexes include spaces for worship, religious teaching, processions and communal life, with some buildings retaining more than one religious phase.
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Built as Carabanchel’s medieval parish church, the Hermitage of Santa María la Antigua preserves Mudéjar architecture, pilgrimage traditions, and…
Commissioned by Francisco de los Cobos in 1536, the Holy Chapel of the Savior in Úbeda became a Spanish Renaissance family mausoleum, distinguished…
Probably founded in the late 11th century by St Meletios the Younger, the monastery preserves a 12th-century church, an attached chapel, and later…
Hopewell Culture National Historical Park preserves mound complexes and geometric earthworks associated with Indigenous Hopewell traditions. Its…
Founded around 1500, Iglesia de la Concepción became Santa Cruz de Tenerife’s principal parish church. Its five-naved plan and furnishings reflect…
Founded in 1249, Iglesia de Omnium Sanctorum preserves medieval church fabric and a rich history of parish worship, confraternities, and street…
Iglesia de San Francisco de Asís is a historic Baroque Canarian parish church in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, developed from a seventeenth-century…
Founded as a Georgian monastic community around 980–983, Iviron became a major center of Georgian scholarship and remains a Greek Orthodox monastery…
Built between 1666 and 1677, the Jesuit Church served Lucerne’s Jesuit college and became Switzerland’s first large Baroque church north of the Alps.
Kamyana Mohyla is a sandstone outcrop in Ukraine’s Molochna River valley, where carvings in caves and grottoes reflect a long, debated history of…
Katarina Church is a Baroque parish church on Stockholm’s Katarina Hill. Built from the 17th century onward and reconstructed after major fires in…
Founded in the 11th century, Kecharis Monastery became a major Armenian religious, cultural, and educational center, with buildings developed through…
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On this page10 sections
Explore by tradition
Browse these collections for religious sites associated with a particular tradition.
Temples, columned halls and inner sanctuaries
At Karnak in Egypt, successive gateways and courts lead through the precinct of Amun-Re. The Great Hypostyle Hall contains closely spaced rows of enormous sandstone columns shaped like papyrus plants. Taller columns along the centre carried a raised roof, with high-level openings admitting light above the lower side aisles.
The smaller Temple of Khonsu preserves another sequence of religious spaces within the complex. A columned court leads to an eight-column hall, a room for the divine barque and inner sanctuaries. The barque carried the god’s image during festivals; its dedicated chamber connected the temple’s enclosed ritual spaces with processions outside.
Cathedrals, vaults and radiating chapels
Amiens Cathedral in France rises around a high Gothic nave with rib vaults carried on clustered supports. Side aisles run beside the main space, while passages around the choir open into a ring of chapels. The different levels of arcades, galleries and windows remain clear from within the building.
The choir has a glazed upper gallery, bringing light into an area that is closed by solid walling in the nave. Large rose windows occupy the transept ends. These arrangements gave a single cathedral distinct spaces for the main liturgy, movement around the sanctuary and worship at subsidiary altars.
Madrasas, teaching rooms and courtyards
The Bou Inania Madrasa in Fez, Morocco, combines a prayer hall with classrooms and accommodation for students. Galleries surround a marble-paved courtyard containing a fountain, while small rooms occupy both the ground and upper levels. Separate corridors and stairs connect the residential areas with the main court.
Carved cedar, stucco and tile decoration are concentrated around entrances and the principal spaces. Founded in the fourteenth century under the Marinids, the complex shows how religious education required both formal teaching rooms and the everyday facilities of a residential institution.
Synagogues, mosques and religious reuse
Córdoba Synagogue in Spain occupies a small site within the old Jewish quarter. A courtyard and entrance hall lead into its prayer room, with a gallery above the entrance. Carved plasterwork and Hebrew inscriptions survive on the walls, preserving the decoration of a medieval place of worship within a densely built neighbourhood.
The city’s Mosque-Cathedral contains a much larger sequence of religious spaces. Repeated double-tiered arches supported the mosque’s roof on comparatively short columns, creating long views through the prayer hall. Christian chapels and a later central cathedral nave were inserted after the building’s conversion. The Islamic arcades and the later church architecture remain visible within the same complex.
Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines beside water
At Byōdō-in in Uji, Japan, the Phoenix Hall stands on an island in a pond. Its central Buddhist hall is flanked by wing corridors, with another corridor extending behind it. Built in 1053, the hall preserves the timber framing and broad projecting eaves of a building arranged around an image of Amida Buddha. The bronze phoenixes on the roof are replicas; the originals are kept separately.
Itsukushima Shrine, on Miyajima, uses a different relationship with water. Covered corridors link Shinto worship halls, purification spaces and subsidiary shrines over the shallow bay. A raised stage stands before the principal halls. High tide surrounds the supports, while low tide exposes the ground beneath them. Rebuilding and the repair of timber exposed to seawater have maintained the complex’s historic arrangement over successive centuries.
Explore the collection
Explore religious sites on the map or in the grid. Narrow the results by country, site type, civilization or era, with additional filters for popularity and rating. Select a map marker to view the site’s details and open its article, or open the article from its grid entry.