Sacred & Spiritual Places in East Asia

Spirituality is woven through the fabric of East Asia, where Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto, and Confucian tradition have shaped landscapes for well over a thousand years. Sacred mountains, monastery-fortresses, and mist-wrapped temple complexes remain places of genuine pilgrimage as much as sightseeing.

The settings are extraordinary. Monks still chant in cliff-clinging Tibetan gompas, ascetics climb thousand-step stairways to summit shrines, and travellers can sleep in temple lodgings, share vegetarian meals, and rise for dawn prayers. The atmosphere ranges from austere and meditative to exuberantly colourful.

The sacred sites below span the region’s great faiths and their most revered peaks and sanctuaries, offering not just architecture but a living window into how belief has ordered life here for centuries.

Sacred sites#

Fushimi Inari-taisha

Thousands of vermilion torii gates tunnel up a forested Kyoto hillside to a shrine dedicated to the rice deity, a hypnotic and much-photographed pilgrimage.

Potala Palace

The tiered fortress-monastery towering over Lhasa was the seat of the Dalai Lamas, its sacred chapels and golden tombs radiating Tibetan Buddhist power.

Mount Emei

One of China’s four sacred Buddhist mountains, its temple-lined stairways climb through cloud forest and cheeky monkeys to a golden summit summit above the clouds.

Ise Jingū

Japan’s most sacred Shinto sanctuary, rebuilt every twenty years in cypress amid an ancient forest, honours the sun goddess at the spiritual heart of the nation.

Haeinsa

This Korean mountain temple safeguards the Tripitaka Koreana, tens of thousands of woodblocks carving the Buddhist canon, housed in centuries-old wooden halls.

Mount Tai

The most revered of China’s five sacred Taoist mountains, ascended by emperors and pilgrims up a grand stone stairway to cliffside shrines and a fabled sunrise.

Jokhang

The spiritual centre of Tibetan Buddhism in Lhasa, ringed by prostrating pilgrims circling its sacred core beneath fluttering prayer flags and juniper smoke.

Labrang Monastery

One of the great Tibetan Buddhist monasteries outside Tibet, its whitewashed halls and prayer-wheel corridors bustling with maroon-robed monks on the grasslands.

Erdene Zuu Monastery

Mongolia’s oldest surviving monastery rises within a wall of 108 stupas on the site of the ancient imperial capital, a poignant survivor of a lost empire.

Wutai Shan

A cluster of temples across five flat-topped peaks, this sacred Buddhist mountain draws pilgrims to some of China’s oldest surviving wooden halls.

Kinkaku-ji

The golden Zen pavilion mirrored in its pond is Kyoto’s most serene image of Buddhist aesthetics, glowing above a meticulously composed strolling garden.

The Big Buddha (Hong Kong)

A giant bronze Buddha seated atop a Lantau Island hilltop, reached by cable car and stone steps, presides over a monastery and sweeping sea views.

Gandantegchinlen Monastery

Mongolia’s most important functioning monastery in Ulaanbaatar shelters a towering gilded statue and the chanting of monks who kept the faith alive through hard decades.