These places offer more than just photo opportunities. Many of them have been significant for people throughout history as places of pilgrimage and worship. Even if the faith isn’t your own many of them resonate with an atmosphere of reverence and solemnity that will touch the least religious soul. You will often leave feeling connected, if not to the whole of nature, at least to the chain of human history.

Machu Picchu, Petra, Angkor Wat, the Parthenon and the Pyramids appear in this list, proving that it’s not just the meditative perspective of remote mountain tops that pilgrims seek out in order to connect with their spiritual side. These wondrous monuments are attractions from a purely historic and architectural viewpoint as well, and many people don’t realise until they arrive how much of the atmosphere survives beyond the visitors and their cameras.

You may have already planned to visit one of these sacred places on your holiday – even to us modern folk many of them have a certain regenerative and restorative power. Could it be the perspective they give on human history, or is it just seeing such a revered spot in person and feeling the atmosphere that gives you something to think about and share with friends and family when you return?

Many of the places on this list are worth building a holiday around so trawl though and plan yourself a mini pilgrimage and recharge your spiritual batteries.

Types of Sacred Places: Churches & Abbeys, Temples, Mosques, Sacred Spaces

Related categories: Arts, History, Urban, Festivals, Tourist Attractions, Sacred Places

Experts in Sacred Places:  Kynan Wieltz,  Martin Gray

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