Sacred & Spiritual Places in the World

Holy to Judaism, Christianity and Islam alike, this ancient walled city packs an extraordinary density of sacred sites within a few narrow, stone-paved streets. Pilgrims pray at the Western Wall, follow the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and gaze up at the shimmering golden Dome of the Rock.

The holiest city in Islam and birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad draws millions each year for the Hajj, the great pilgrimage every able Muslim is called to make once. At its heart the black-draped Kaaba, toward which the world’s Muslims turn in prayer, is circled day and night.

One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on Earth is the spiritual capital of Hinduism, strung for miles along the sacred Ganges. At dawn pilgrims descend the ghats to bathe and pray; at dusk fire ceremonies light the riverbank as funeral pyres burn nearby, an unflinching encounter with life, death and devotion.

Beneath a direct descendant of the very Bodhi tree that grows here, the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment, making this quiet Indian town the single holiest place in Buddhism. Pilgrims from across Asia gather to meditate and circumambulate the great Mahabodhi Temple, its soaring tower rising above the sacred tree.

For over a thousand years, pilgrims have walked the Camino across Spain to reach this beautiful Galician city, where the remains of St James are said to lie beneath the great cathedral. Weary, elated walkers arrive daily before the ornate baroque facade, and the swinging of the giant Botafumeiro censer is unforgettable.

This small town in the French Pyrenees became one of Christianity’s great pilgrimage centres after a young girl reported visions of the Virgin Mary at a riverside grotto in 1858. Millions come each year, many seeking healing, to drink the spring waters and join vast candlelit evening processions.

The largest religious monument in the world, this vast moated temple in Cambodia was raised in the twelfth century as a Hindu shrine to Vishnu and later became Buddhist. Its five lotus-bud towers, endless bas-reliefs and mirror-still pools are astonishing, but sunrise, when the silhouette doubles in the water, is near-sacred.

The world’s largest Buddhist temple rises from the fertile Javanese plain in nine stacked stone terraces carved with over a thousand relief panels depicting the path to enlightenment. Visitors circle upward past hundreds of serene Buddhas to a crown of latticed stupas, best at dawn as mist clears from the volcanoes.

Towering above Lhasa on its rocky hill, the former winter palace of the Dalai Lamas is the spiritual and architectural heart of Tibetan Buddhism. Its whitewashed and deep-ochre walls climb thirteen storeys, and inside a labyrinth of chapels, jewel-encrusted golden tombs and prayer halls glows with butter lamps and centuries of devotion.

The holiest shrine of Sikhism shimmers at the centre of a large sacred pool in Amritsar, its gold-covered upper storeys mirrored in the still water and reached by a marble causeway. Its vast communal kitchen feeds tens of thousands of visitors of every faith a free meal every single day.

This magnificent gilded stupa crowning a hill in Yangon is the most sacred Buddhist site in Myanmar, said to enshrine strands of the Buddha’s own hair. Covered in tonnes of gold leaf and topped with a jewel-encrusted spire, it blazes at sunset as barefoot pilgrims circle the marble platform.

The last surviving remnant of the retaining wall of the ancient Second Temple is the holiest place where Jews are permitted to pray, at the foot of Jerusalem’s contested Temple Mount. Worshippers press tiny written prayers into the crevices between the massive weathered stones and sway in fervent prayer against them.

For nearly a thousand years the greatest cathedral in Christendom, then for centuries an imperial Ottoman mosque, this domed masterpiece in Istanbul is a layered monument to two great faiths. Its vast interior blends soaring golden Byzantine mosaics with immense discs of Islamic calligraphy beneath a dome that seems to float weightlessly.

Thousands of vivid vermilion torii gates snake up a wooded mountainside behind this important Shinto shrine on the edge of Kyoto, forming glowing orange tunnels that rank among Japan’s most iconic sights. Dedicated to Inari and guarded by countless stone foxes, the higher paths reward climbers with quiet forest and city views.

Perched impossibly atop a cluster of sheer, weathered rock pillars in central Greece, these Eastern Orthodox monasteries were built from the fourteenth century by monks seeking isolation. Once reachable only by rope ladders, several still function, and the sight of their centuries-old buildings crowning the spires is otherworldly at sunrise.

This revered Buddhist temple in the hills of eastern Kyoto is famous for its vast wooden veranda, built jutting out over a steep hillside on tall pillars entirely without nails. Visitors take in sweeping views over the maple and cherry trees, and drink from the three channels of the sacred Otowa waterfall.

Known worldwide as the Blue Mosque for the tens of thousands of hand-painted blue Iznik tiles lining its interior, this graceful six-minaret mosque faces the Hagia Sophia across a garden square. Its cascade of domes and soft light filtering through hundreds of stained-glass windows create an atmosphere of serene, uplifting grandeur.

Clinging improbably to a granite cliff some 900 metres above a Bhutanese valley, the Tiger’s Nest monastery is the most sacred site in the kingdom, where a revered eighth-century master is said to have meditated after arriving on a flying tigress. The steep hike up rewards you with a heart-stopping view.

This sublime masterpiece of Ming-dynasty architecture, set in a vast walled park in Beijing, was where emperors came each year to pray to heaven for good harvests. The circular, triple-eaved Hall of Prayer, built entirely of interlocking wood without a single nail and painted brilliant blue, embodies traditional Chinese cosmology.

One of the largest Gothic cathedrals in the world took over six centuries to complete, its blackened twin openwork spires soaring above the German city and the Rhine. Inside, some of Europe’s finest medieval stained glass casts jewelled light over a golden shrine said to hold the relics of the Three Kings.