The Most Mystical Sacred Places in Africa
6 places in 2 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most mystical sacred places in Africa are Giza pyramid complex (Egypt), Valley of the Kings (Egypt) and Church of Saint George, Lalibela (Ethiopia). The list covers 6 sacred places in 2 countries. Egypt has the most, with 4. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Africa holds some of the oldest sacred architecture in the world, built to carry the dead into eternity or to bring the faithful closer to heaven. In Egypt, three thousand years of belief in an afterlife produced pyramids aligned with the stars, painted tombs cut deep into desert hills and underground galleries for sacred animals. In the Ethiopian highlands, Christian kingdoms carved churches out of living rock and set them on cliff faces. Their mystery comes from the scale of effort they demanded and the darkness in which many of them stand.
The Giza pyramid complex, with the Great Pyramid of Khufu and the Sphinx, is the last survivor of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Across the Nile from Luxor, the Valley of the Kings hides the tombs of New Kingdom pharaohs, painted with guides to the underworld. The Serapeum of Saqqara is a long gallery of tunnels holding colossal granite sarcophagi of the sacred Apis bulls, and the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa in Alexandria mix Egyptian gods with Greek and Roman dress. In Lalibela, the Church of Saint George is carved down into the rock in the shape of a cross, and in Tigray, Abuna Yemata Guh is a painted church hollowed into a sandstone pinnacle and reached by climbing the cliff.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Giza pyramid complex | Necropolis | Egypt | |
| 2 | Valley of the Kings | Archaeological site | Egypt | ✓ |
| 3 | Church of Saint George, Lalibela | Rock-cut church | Ethiopia | |
| 4 | Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa | Catacombs | Egypt | |
| 5 | Abuna Yemata Guh | Rock-cut church | Ethiopia | |
| 6 | Serapeum of Saqqara | Catacombs | Egypt |
01 Giza pyramid complex
Egypt · 6.7 km from Giza29.976° N 31.133° E
Ricardo Liberato · CC BY-SA 2.0 The Giza plateau, on the edge of the Western Desert above modern Giza, holds the most famous group of monuments on Earth: the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, the Great Sphinx, and the temples, causeways and cemeteries that served them. All were built during Egypt's Fourth Dynasty, roughly 2600 to 2500 BC.
Did you know? The three great pyramids are aligned to the cardinal directions with an error of only about one-fifteenth of a degree.
02 Valley of the Kings
Egypt · 6.5 km from Luxor25.740° N 32.602° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Freiheitsjunkie from Pixabay For nearly five centuries, from about 1539 to 1075 BC, the pharaohs of the New Kingdom were buried not under pyramids but in tombs cut deep into a dry valley on the west bank of the Nile opposite Thebes, modern Luxor. The valley lies beneath al-Qurn, a pyramid-shaped peak that may have been part of its appeal, and its hidden entrances were meant to defeat the robbers who had emptied the older royal tombs.
Did you know? Workmen who cut and painted the royal tombs lived in the nearby village of Deir el-Medina, and their records include what may be history's first documented labour strike.
03 Church of Saint George, Lalibela
Ethiopia12.032° N 39.041° E
Sailko · CC BY 3.0 Of the eleven churches cut from the rock at Lalibela, Bete Giyorgis, the Church of Saint George, is the one that has become the emblem of Ethiopia. Approached from the surrounding ground it is almost invisible: all you see at first is a great cross lying flat at your feet, its arms carved with three nested Greek crosses.
Did you know? According to legend, Saint George rode up and complained that no church was his, and priests still point out hoofprints his horse left in the rock.
04 Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa
Egypt · 4.5 km from Alexandria31.187° N 29.905° E
Asiatologist · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa are the largest Roman-era burial complex in Egypt and one of the strangest: a tomb where Egyptian gods wear Roman armour. Cut into the bedrock of Alexandria in the second century AD, they lay forgotten until 1900, when, as the story goes, a donkey fell through the ground into the access shaft.
Did you know? Side panels in the main tomb show the sacred Apis bull receiving offerings, beside the central scene of Anubis embalming the dead.
05 Abuna Yemata Guh
Ethiopia13.915° N 39.343° E
Evan Williams · CC BY-SA 4.0 Abuna Yemata Guh is a church hidden in a sandstone pinnacle of the Gheralta range in Tigray, and reaching it is part of what makes it so extraordinary. The chapel lies about 2,580 metres above sea level and roughly 200 metres above the surrounding plain, hollowed out of the cliff face near the top of the rock.
Did you know? It is often described as the most inaccessible place of worship in the world, yet priests have no record of anyone dying on the climb.
06 Serapeum of Saqqara
Egypt · 15.1 km from Giza29.875° N 31.212° E
No machine-readable author provided. Neithsabes assumed (based on copyright claims). · Public domain Deep under the desert at Saqqara runs a corridor lined with enormous stone boxes, each cut from a single block of granite or basalt and big enough to hold a bull. This is the Serapeum, the burial place of the Apis bulls, sacred animals of the god Ptah at Memphis, the old capital of Egypt.
Did you know? Herodotus wrote that an Apis bull had to be black, with a white triangle on its brow, an eagle shape on its back and a knot under its tongue.
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 mystical sacred places in Africa?
- On our list, Giza pyramid complex (Egypt) ranks first, followed by Valley of the Kings (Egypt) and Church of Saint George, Lalibela (Ethiopia).
- Which country has the most sacred places in Africa?
- In our collection, the most come from Egypt (4) and Ethiopia (2).
- How was the Church of Saint George in Lalibela built?
- It was not built but carved: workers cut a trench around a block of volcanic rock and then hollowed out the interior, leaving a cross-shaped church standing in a pit. Tradition credits King Lalibela, around the 12th to 13th century.
- What is the Serapeum of Saqqara?
- It is an underground burial complex for the Apis bulls, sacred animals of the god Ptah. Its galleries hold huge stone sarcophagi and were excavated by Auguste Mariette in the 1850s.
- How were the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa discovered?
- According to the usual account, they were found in 1900 when a donkey pulling a cart fell through the ground into the shaft.
- How many sacred places are on this list in Africa?
- The list covers 6 sacred places in 2 countries. Egypt has the most, with 4.