The Most Beautiful Ancient Sacred Places in Europe
10 places in 5 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful ancient sacred places in Europe are Castel Sant'Angelo (Italy), Parthenon (Greece) and Ġgantija (Malta). The list covers 10 ancient sacred places in 5 countries. Italy has the most, with 5. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Europe's oldest sacred places carry layer upon layer of belief. A Neolithic temple, a Greek sanctuary or a Roman tomb rarely stayed with its first faith: many were reused by Christians, fortified by popes or venerated by later communities who read their own meaning into the stones. That continuity is what age adds here. These are places where people have gathered to bury, pray and remember for so long that the building itself has become a record of changing belief.
The Ġgantija temples on Gozo were raised in the fourth millennium BCE from megaliths weighing several tonnes, and are among the oldest free-standing structures on Earth. The Parthenon, built on the Athenian Acropolis in the fifth century BCE for the goddess Athena, set the standard for classical architecture. In Rome, the Pantheon still carries the unreinforced concrete dome raised under Hadrian, open to the sky through its central oculus, while Castel Sant'Angelo began as Hadrian's own mausoleum and later became a papal fortress.
Early Christianity added its own sacred ground. The Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore keeps fifth-century mosaics among the oldest in any Roman church, and the Catacombs of San Gennaro in Naples cut burial halls and frescoed chambers into soft volcanic tuff. Later centuries reached further into rock and landscape: the Rock-hewn Churches of Ivanovo hide medieval frescoes in caves above the Rusenski Lom river, and at Radimlja in Herzegovina, carved stećci tombstones stand in rows with reliefs of riders, hunters and raised hands.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Castel Sant'Angelo | Castle | Italy | |
| 2 | Parthenon | Ruins | Greece | ✓ |
| 3 | Ġgantija | Archaeological site | Malta | ✓ |
| 4 | Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore | Church building | Italy | ✓ |
| 5 | Pantheon, Rome | Archaeological site | Italy | |
| 6 | Necropolis of stecci at Radimlja, the historic site | Necropolis | Bosnia and Herzegovina | ✓ |
| 7 | Sanctuary of Oropa | Pilgrimage site | Italy | |
| 8 | Catacombs of San Gennaro | Catacombs | Italy | |
| 9 | Temple of Apollo Epicurius in Bassae | Ruins | Greece | ✓ |
| 10 | Rock-hewn Churches of Ivanovo | Church building | Bulgaria | ✓ |
01 Castel Sant'Angelo
Italy · 1.4 km from Rome41.903° N 12.466° E
Image by rainhard2 from Pixabay Hadrian started building his own tomb in 123 CE and didn't live to see it finished — it was completed in 139 under his successor Antoninus Pius, a cylindrical drum of a monument meant to hold the ashes of an emperor and his family for eternity. Eternity lasted about three centuries as a mausoleum.
Did you know? The current bronze angel by Peter Anton von Verschaffelt replaced a 1536 marble Saint Michael by Raffaello da Montelupo in 1753.
02 Parthenon
Παρθενώνας
Greece · 1.6 km from Athens37.972° N 23.727° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by nonbirinonko from Pixabay The Parthenon looks perfectly straight only because almost nothing about it actually is.
Did you know? On 26 September 1687 a Venetian mortar round hit gunpowder stored inside by the Ottoman garrison, and the blast killed about 300 people.
03 Ġgantija
Malta · 27.5 km from Valletta36.047° N 14.269° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Vitold Muratov · CC BY-SA 4.0 Ġgantija stands on the edge of the Xagħra plateau on Gozo, the second island of the Maltese archipelago, and it is the oldest of the megalithic temples that make up the Maltese World Heritage listing. Its two temples were raised around 3600 BC, which puts them centuries ahead of the Egyptian pyramids.
Did you know? Ġgantija is regarded as the second-oldest surviving human-built religious structure in the world, younger only than Göbekli Tepe in Turkey.
04 Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore
Italy · 1.4 km from Rome41.898° N 12.499° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
L'Ospite Inatteso · CC BY-SA 4.0 Santa Maria Maggiore, the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, stands on the summit of the Esquiline Hill and is one of Rome's four major papal basilicas. Unlike most great Roman churches, it has kept the bones of its original Early Christian building.
Did you know? Pope Francis was the first pope buried outside the Vatican since Leo XIII in 1903, and the first in this basilica since Clement IX in 1669.
05 Pantheon, Rome
Pantheon
Italy · 0.4 km from Rome41.899° N 12.477° E
Image by falcon505 from Pixabay The Pantheon is the best-preserved great building of ancient Rome, and its interior is one of the most perfect spaces ever built. The temple first raised by Marcus Agrippa under Augustus burned down; the building that stands today was reconstructed under the emperor Hadrian and completed around AD 126.
Did you know? Two small bell towers added in the 17th century were mocked by Romans as ass's ears and finally taken down in 1883.
06 Necropolis of stecci at Radimlja, the historic site
Nekropola Radimlja
Bosnia and Herzegovina · 29.9 km from Mostar43.093° N 17.923° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Joanne Goldby from Birmingham, UK · CC BY-SA 2.0 Stećci — massive carved medieval tombstones — are found only in the western Balkans, and Radimlja, in the Vidovo field just outside Stolac in Herzegovina, is the most celebrated site where they can be seen. In 2016 it was included in the World Heritage listing of stećci cemeteries shared by Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia.
Did you know? The core of the cemetery is three large chests made at the end of the 14th century, two of them richly carved in low relief.
More about Necropolis of stecci at Radimlja, the historic site →
07 Sanctuary of Oropa
Santuario di Oropa
Italy45.628° N 7.979° E
Alfiere33 · CC BY-SA 4.0 High in a natural amphitheatre of the Biellese Alps, at roughly 1,160 metres, the Sanctuary of Oropa is less a single church than a small mountain town built for the Virgin. Two basilicas, arcaded courtyards, former royal apartments and long pilgrim wings climb the slope in stages, and the whole ensemble is crowned by a great domed church that can be seen from the plain around Biella.
Did you know? The Black Madonna of Oropa is a wooden statue dated by scholars to around 1300 and attributed to a sculptor from the Aosta Valley.
08 Catacombs of San Gennaro
Catacombe di San Gennaro
Italy · 2.5 km from Naples40.864° N 14.248° E
Dominik Matus · CC BY-SA 4.0 Beneath the slope that climbs from the Sanità district to Capodimonte in northern Naples lies the largest Christian catacomb complex in southern Italy. Unlike the narrow galleries of Rome, the Catacombs of San Gennaro were cut into soft tuff on two levels with broad, high passages, and even whole churches were carved out of the rock.
Did you know? The lower level is the oldest, dating to the 3rd or 4th century, and may have begun as a pre-Christian cemetery.
09 Temple of Apollo Epicurius in Bassae
Ναός Επικούριου Απόλλωνα
Greece37.430° N 21.900° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Jean Housen · CC BY-SA 4.0 On a bare limestone shoulder of Mount Kotilion, more than 1,100 metres up in the wild hills where ancient Arcadia met Messenia, stands one of the best-preserved temples of classical Greece. Its name, Bassai, means roughly a little vale among the rocks, and the setting is exactly that: grey stone, oak scrub and a long view over ridges towards the sea.
Did you know? Bassae became the first Greek site on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1986.
10 Rock-hewn Churches of Ivanovo
Ивановски скални църкви
Bulgaria · 17.6 km from Ruse43.696° N 25.988° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Hans A. Rosbach · CC BY-SA 3.0 South of Ruse, the river Rusenski Lom has cut a winding canyon into the limestone plateau, and in its cliffs, some 32 metres above the water, medieval monks hollowed out churches, chapels and cells.
Did you know? Ivanovo is one of hundreds of rock churches, hermitages and cells that made the Rusenski Lom valley a Bulgarian spiritual centre from the 10th to the 14th century.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful ancient sacred places in Europe?
- On our list, Castel Sant'Angelo (Italy) ranks first, followed by Parthenon (Greece) and Ġgantija (Malta).
- Which country has the most ancient sacred places in Europe?
- In our collection, the most come from Italy (5), Greece (2) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (1).
- How old are the Ġgantija temples?
- The Ġgantija temples on Gozo date to around 3600 to 3200 BCE. That makes them older than Stonehenge and the pyramids of Giza.
- Why has the Pantheon's dome survived for nearly two thousand years?
- Roman builders used lighter aggregate towards the top of the dome, thinned the shell as it rose and lightened it further with coffers and the open oculus. The result is still the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world.
- What was Castel Sant'Angelo originally?
- It was built in the second century as the mausoleum of Emperor Hadrian and his family. In the Middle Ages the popes turned it into a fortress and refuge, linked to the Vatican by a fortified corridor.
- How many ancient sacred places are on this list in Europe?
- The list covers 10 ancient sacred places in 5 countries. Italy has the most, with 5.