The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Europe

299 places in 37 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Milan Cathedral

   Duomo di Milano

   Italy · 1.3 km from Milan45.464° N 9.191° E

   

   The design was argued over for generations. The first master builder planned a Lombard brick church, but Visconti wanted the latest northern Gothic, and French and German engineers were brought in to advise; at the end of the 1390s one of them, Jean Mignot, declared that the Lombard masons were building without science and that the whole thing risked collapse. It did not collapse.

   Did you know? Leonardo da Vinci and Bramante both took part in the 1488 competition to design the structure over the cathedral's crossing.

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2. 02 Catacombs of Paris

   Catacombes de Paris

   France · 3.1 km from Paris48.834° N 2.332° E

   

   The story begins with the ground giving way. Much of the Left Bank sits on Lutetian limestone that had been mined, often without records, since the Middle Ages, and in 1774 a house on the rue d'Enfer collapsed into an old quarry. Louis XVI set up an inspection service to shore up the tunnels.

   Did you know? In August 1944 the Resistance leader Henri Rol-Tanguy called Parisians to arms from a base in the tunnels, a week before the city was liberated.

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3. 03 Castel Sant'Angelo

   Italy · 1.4 km from Rome41.903° N 12.466° E

   

   Its current name comes from a specific legend: in 590 CE, during a plague, Pope Gregory the Great is said to have seen the Archangel Michael appear on the summit sheathing his sword — read as a sign the epidemic was ending. A statue of the angel has stood on top ever since, and the building has cycled through duty as papal residence, state prison, and now museum, on top of its original job as a tomb.

   Did you know? When the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410, looters scattered the imperial urns and their ashes.

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4. 04 St. Peter's Basilica

   Basilica di San Pietro

   Vatican City · 2.4 km from Rome41.902° N 12.453° E

   

   That successor turned out to be Giacomo della Porta, working with Domenico Fontana, who raised the actual dome — a double shell, slightly more pointed than Michelangelo's original drawings — in just 22 months between 1588 and 1590, using around 800 laborers. The final piece, a gilded bronze sphere and cross for the lantern at the very top, wasn't hoisted into place until November 1593, nearly thirty years after Michelangelo's death.

   Did you know? The rebuilding was partly paid for by selling indulgences, and Johann Tetzel's aggressive campaign became a spark of the Protestant Reformation.

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5. 05 Wawel Cathedral

   Bazylika Archikatedralna św. Stanisława i św. Wacława w Krakowie

   Poland · 1.8 km from Kraków50.055° N 19.935° E

   

   Three things stand out. The first is Sigismund's Chapel on the south side, with its gilded dome, built between 1517 and 1533 by the Florentine Bartolommeo Berrecci for King Sigismund the Old and often called the purest piece of Italian Renaissance architecture north of the Alps; beside it stands the later Vasa Chapel.

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6. 06 Karlskirche

   Wiener Karlskirche

   Austria · 0.7 km from Vienna48.198° N 16.372° E

   

   What makes the Karlskirche unforgettable is the way it stitches together architectural quotations that should not fit.

   Did you know? The two great spiral-relief columns are hollow inside, built of Zogelsdorf limestone from Lower Austria.

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7. 07 Bamberg Cathedral

   Bamberger Dom

   Germany49.891° N 10.883° E

   

   It holds several things found nowhere else. Henry II and his wife Cunigunde are the only imperial couple ever canonised, and they lie in a marble tomb carved by Tilman Riemenschneider between 1499 and 1513, In the west choir is the tomb of Pope Clement II, who had been bishop of Bamberg: the only papal grave in Germany and north of the Alps.

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8. 08 Parthenon

   Παρθενώνας

   Greece · 1.6 km from Athens37.972° N 23.727° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Whatever the explanation, the speed of construction is not in dispute: the temple went up in about fifteen years, from 447 to 432 BCE, under the architects Ictinus and Callicrates with the sculptor Phidias overseeing the decorative program, during the same burst of Athenian building under Pericles that reshaped the whole Acropolis.

   Did you know? The name comes from the Greek parthenos, maiden, a reference to the virgin goddess Athena.

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9. 09 Church of Our Lady before Týn

   Kostel Panny Marie před Týnem

   Czech Republic · 0.1 km from Prague50.088° N 14.423° E

   

   The present three-aisled Gothic basilica was begun in the mid-14th century, funded by some of the wealthiest burgher families in the city. Its design shows the influence of the two great cathedral workshops of Prague, first that of Matthias of Arras and then that of Peter Parler. Parler's hand is seen above all in the window tracery and the sculpture of the north portal, whose tympanum shows scenes from the Passion.

   Did you know? Jan Rokycana, the Hussite archbishop-elect who became parish priest here in 1427, is buried in the church.

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10. 10 Visoki Dečani

    Manastiri i Deçanit

    Kosovo · 13.1 km from Pejë42.547° N 20.266° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Vito brought the Romanesque and Gothic habits of the Adriatic coast to an Orthodox commission. The walls are laid in alternating bands of pale and pinkish marble, and the portals, windows and capitals carry carved sculpture of a kind rarely seen on Byzantine-rite churches. Inside, the plan is a five-aisled nave with a three-part iconostasis and a spacious narthex, and nearly every surface is painted.

    Did you know? The craftsmen who built the monastery were jointly given a village near Prizren, still called Manastirica, where many of them settled.

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11. 11 San Juan de Gaztelugatxe

    Gaztelugatxe

    Spain · 24.8 km from Bilbao43.447° N 2.785° W

    

    Its history is older and rougher than the modest chapel suggests. A religious building stood on the islet as early as the ninth century. In 1334 the rock was the scene of a confrontation between the Lord of Biscay and King Alfonso XI of Castile; in 1593 it was plundered by Francis Drake, and a year later raided by Huguenots from La Rochelle.

    Did you know? Bermeo's fishing boats leaving for the tuna season traditionally circle the islet three times each way, sounding their sirens for luck.

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12. 12 Albi Cathedral

    Cathédrale Sainte-Cécile d'Albi

    France43.928° N 2.143° E

    

    Construction went on for some two hundred years, and the cathedral was consecrated in 1480. Its single immense nave, about 113 metres long and 30 metres high under the vault, is typical of the southern French Gothic and sets it apart from the cathedrals of the north such as Chartres or Amiens. The austere exterior makes the entrance all the more surprising.

    Did you know? The rood screen and choir enclosure are peopled with 72 carved angels, and the choir holds 120 wooden stalls in two rows.

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13. 13 St Mark's Campanile

    Campanile di San Marco

    Italy · 0.6 km from Venice45.434° N 12.339° E

    

    The form is almost severe: a plain square shaft of brick with shallow pilaster strips, then an arcaded belfry of white Istrian stone, an attic and a pyramidal spire. The attic carries reliefs that reward a close look through binoculars or from the top: two figures of Venice personified as Justice, enthroned between lions with sword and scales, and two winged lions of Saint Mark.

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14. 14 Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque

    Bosnia and Herzegovina · 3.8 km from Sarajevo43.859° N 18.429° E

    

    Its founder, Gazi Husrev-beg (1484–1541), was a grandson of Sultan Bayezid II through his mother and governed the Sanjak of Bosnia for most of the period from 1521 to 1541, leading campaigns into Croatia and Hungary and fighting at Mohács.

    Did you know? The pseudo-Moorish painting added under Austro-Hungarian rule now survives only on the mosque's portal.

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15. 15 San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane

    Chiesa di San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane

    Italy · 0.9 km from Rome41.902° N 12.491° E

    

    The church was built between 1638 and 1641 and consecrated in 1646. Its walls ripple in and out around an elongated plan, and above them rises an oval dome whose surface is covered with a deep, interlocking pattern of coffers, crosses, octagons and hexagons, which shrink as they climb towards the lantern. The effect is of a dome much higher than it really is.

    Did you know? The triangular balusters of the cloister alternate upright and inverted, which Borromini said improved the view from the upper gallery down to the ground floor.

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16. 16 Merry Cemetery

    Romania · 35.8 km from Baia Mare47.971° N 23.696° E

    

    Pătraș didn't flatter anyone. A drinker gets a verse about the bottle that killed him; people are shown at the trade or habit they were best known for, painted in flat, bright colors against a specific shade of deep blue the region now calls Săpânța blue — a color Pătraș said stood for hope and sky, set against green for life, yellow for fertility, red for passion, and black for death.

    Did you know? The cemetery surrounds the village church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in Săpânța.

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17. 17 Kyiv Pechersk Lavra

    Києво-Печерська лавра

    Ukraine · 3.4 km from Kyiv50.434° N 30.558° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Unlike cave shelters built purely for retreat, the tunnels here — the Near Caves and the Far Caves — evolved into a genuine underground settlement: chapels, living cells, and burial vaults side by side. The dry, low-oxygen conditions underground preserved many of the monks interred there, and their remains are still venerated within the caves, making the complex as much a living reliquary as a historic site.

    Did you know? Peter Mohyla opened a monastery school in 1631; a year later it merged into the Kyiv Collegium, the forerunner of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

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18. 18 St. Stephen's Cathedral

    Stephansdom

    Austria · 1 km from Vienna48.208° N 16.373° E

    

    The south tower took 65 years to build, from 1368 to 1433, and served as the city's observation post during the Ottoman sieges of 1529 and 1683. Its northern twin was abandoned in 1511 at 68 metres and capped in 1578 with a Renaissance top. It now holds the Pummerin, a bell of 20,130 kilograms, the largest in Austria.

    Did you know? Until 1955 watchmen lived in a small apartment high in the south tower, keeping lookout through the night and ringing the bells if they spotted a fire.

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19. 19 Church of St. Anne, Vilnius

    Vilniaus Šv. Onos bažnyčia

    Lithuania · 1.5 km from Vilnius54.683° N 25.293° E

    

    The first church on the site was a wooden one built for Anna, Grand Duchess of Lithuania, and it was destroyed by fire in 1419. The present building went up around 1495-1500 under Alexander Jagiellon and was consecrated in 1500. Its designer is unknown: the names of Michael Enkinger and Benedikt Rejt are both put forward, but neither attribution is backed by written records.

    Did you know? Abraomas Kulvietis, a key figure of the Lithuanian Reformation, preached here between 1538 and 1541.

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20. 20 Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi

    Basilica di San Francesco

    Italy · 18 km from Perugia43.075° N 12.606° E

    

    The basilica is two churches stacked one above the other. The Lower Church is low and dim, vaulted like a crypt and built to hold the saint's body; the Upper Church above it is tall, light and Gothic. Brother Elias of Cortona oversaw the work, and he hid Francis's body so well, to protect it from relic hunters, that it was only rediscovered beneath the floor of the Lower Church in 1818, after which a crypt was built to receive it.

    Did you know? In 1934 four of Francis's closest companions — Brothers Rufino, Angelo, Masseo and Leo — were entombed in the crypt walls around his coffin.

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21. 21 Giralda

    Spain · 2.4 km from Seville37.386° N 5.992° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The minaret was ordered by the caliph Abu Ya'qub Yusuf in 1184 and finished under his son al-Mansur on 10 March 1198, when four metal spheres were placed on its tip to celebrate the victory over Alfonso VIII of Castile. Its architects were Ahmad ibn Baso, who began the stone base, the Maghrebi builder 'Ali al-Ghumari, who raised the brick shaft and did most of its decoration, and Abu Layth al-Siqilli, who built the small upper shaft.

    Did you know? The Giraldillo represents the triumph of Faith; Luis de Vargas devised its imagery, Bartolomé Morel cast it, and it was hoisted into place in 1568.

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22. 22 St. Vitus Cathedral

    Katedrála svatého Víta v Praze

    Czech Republic · 1.7 km from Prague50.091° N 14.401° E

    

    The Gothic cathedral was begun on 21 November 1344, when Prague became an archbishopric, and was driven by Charles IV, who wanted a coronation church, a royal burial place and a shrine for St Wenceslaus.

    Did you know? For decades church and state fought in court over who owned the cathedral; the dispute ended only with a 2010 agreement on joint administration.

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23. 23 Kylemore Abbey

    Ireland53.562° N 9.889° W

    

    Margaret Henry died in 1874, of dysentery contracted on a trip to Egypt, at forty-five. Mitchell never recovered the same enthusiasm for the estate. He built a miniature Gothic Revival church a short walk from the castle as her memorial — modelled, according to the guides who show it, on Norwich Cathedral in miniature — and eventually a mausoleum where both are buried.

    Did you know? The nuns trace their community to a house founded in Brussels in 1598 by Lady Mary Percy, moving to Ypres in 1665.

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24. 24 Capela dos Ossos

    Portugal · 1 km from Évora38.569° N 7.908° W

    

    The chapel was created in the seventeenth century by Franciscan friars of the Convent of São Francisco. The friars had two reasons: the city's many monastic cemeteries were running out of space, and the friars wanted a place that would bring the brothers and the faithful face to face with mortality, in the spirit of the Counter-Reformation. Bones were brought from some forty-two cemeteries around Évora. 7 by 11 metres.

    Did you know? The chapel was dedicated to an image of Christ carrying the cross, known in Évora as the Lord Jesus of the House of Bones.

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25. 25 Arctic Cathedral

    Norway · 1.5 km from Tromsø69.648° N 18.987° E

    

    The church was designed by the Norwegian architect Jan Inge Hovig. Work began on 1 April 1964 and it was consecrated on 19 November 1965. Hovig built it from cast-in-place concrete panels coated in aluminium, arranged in a series of descending triangular sections that give the building its stepped, faceted silhouette; the shape is said to take its cue from the twin-peaked island of Håja off the coast.

    Did you know? The new organ was paid for partly by gifts and partly by income from tourists and the church's midnight-sun concerts.

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26. 26 Weltenburg Abbey

    Benediktinerkloster Weltenburg

    Germany · 25.8 km from Regensburg48.899° N 11.820° E

    

    Its most dramatic period arrived a thousand years later, under Abbot Maurus Bächl in the early eighteenth century, who brought in the Asam brothers — Cosmas Damian as painter, Egid Quirin as sculptor — to rebuild the abbey church.

    Did you know? The flat-ended choir was extended in 1720–21 with an apse and three large windows purely so that the St George group could be lit from behind.

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27. 27 Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg

    Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg

    France · 0.2 km from Strasbourg48.582° N 7.751° E

    

    Stand in front of the west facade first. It is a screen of stone strings, slender columns and gables laid over the wall behind, with three portals below, the right one showing the Last Judgement with the wise and foolish virgins, and a rayonnant rose window 14 metres across above. Inside, the building reveals its long history: the crypt and parts of the east end are still Romanesque, while the nave is Gothic.

    Did you know? In the Second World War the stained glass was packed into 74 cases and hidden in a salt mine near Heilbronn, then returned by the US Monuments Men.

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28. 28 Belfry of Bruges

    Belfort van Brugge

    Belgium · 1.4 km from Bruges51.208° N 3.225° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Fire shaped its silhouette. A blaze in 1280 destroyed the upper part and the city archives with it. The octagonal top stage was added between 1483 and 1487, but lightning burned its wooden spire in 1493, and a later spire burned again in 1741 and was never replaced.

    Did you know? From 1604 the city paid official carillonneurs to play for the townspeople on Sundays, holidays and market days, a tradition that continues today.

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29. 29 Monumental Cemetery of Milan

    Cimitero monumentale di Milano

    Italy · 2.4 km from Milan45.486° N 9.179° E

    

    Visitors enter through the Famedio, a long, monumental entrance building in a Neo-Medieval idiom of striped marble and stone, conceived as a hall of fame for the city's most distinguished citizens. At its centre lies the novelist Alessandro Manzoni, author of The Betrothed, and memorials to many other notable Milanese surround him.

    Did you know? Football is represented too: Herbert Kilpin, founder of A.C. Milan, and the striker Giuseppe Meazza rest in the cemetery.

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30. 30 Certosa di Padula

    Italy · 36.1 km from Potenza40.337° N 15.652° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Almost nothing of the Gothic foundation shows today. From 1583 until the late eighteenth century the monks rebuilt the complex in the Baroque manner, adding a facade crowned with statues and pinnacles that was finished only in 1723, and an elliptical grand staircase in an octagonal tower, completed in 1779 as the last major work before the monks were expelled. A separate spiral staircase of white marble leads up to the library.

    Did you know? Before the monks were expelled the library held some 20,000 volumes; only about a tenth remain, the rest dispersed or sent to Naples.

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