The Most Mystical Sacred Places in Europe
27 places in 10 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most mystical sacred places in Europe are Catacombs of Paris (France), San Juan de Gaztelugatxe (Spain) and Batalha Monastery (Portugal). The list covers 27 sacred places in 10 countries. Italy has the most, with 14. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Europe's sacred places carry layer upon layer of belief: Neolithic stone circles, Bronze Age tombs, medieval pilgrim churches, Baroque sanctuaries and modern churches cut into bedrock. What makes some of them mystical rather than merely grand is a sense of passage — a stair climbing toward a hermitage above the sea, a hill crowded with crosses, a crypt where the dead are kept in view. The continent's long Christian tradition of relics, pilgrimage and memento mori gave many of these places an atmosphere that no guidebook can explain away.
San Juan de Gaztelugatxe crowns a rocky islet on the Basque coast, joined to the land by a narrow causeway and a long stone stair. The Hill of Crosses in northern Lithuania is covered by a dense forest of crosses, rosaries and crucifixes left by pilgrims over generations. The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, said to hold the tomb of Saint James, has drawn pilgrims along the Camino since the Middle Ages. The Sanctuary of Bom Jesus do Monte near Braga climbs its hillside in a zigzag Baroque stairway of chapels and fountains.
Some are surprisingly recent: Temppeliaukio Church in Helsinki, completed in 1969, was blasted out of solid granite and roofed with a copper dome. Others are very old — the rock-cut tombs of Pantalica in Sicily, Castlerigg's ring of stones in Cumbria, the carved stećci of Radimlja — and some speak plainly of death, like the Catacombs of Paris and the clothed mummies of Palermo's Capuchin Catacombs.
In this list
01 Catacombs of Paris
Catacombes de Paris
France · 3.1 km from Paris48.834° N 2.332° E
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0 Twenty metres beneath the 14th arrondissement, in tunnels left by centuries of limestone quarrying, lie the bones of several million Parisians.
Did you know? The ossuary holds the remains of more than six million people, yet it occupies only a small part of the old quarry tunnels beneath Paris.
02 San Juan de Gaztelugatxe
Gaztelugatxe
Spain · 24.8 km from Bilbao43.447° N 2.785° W
Image by ELG21 from Pixabay Off the rugged Biscay coast between Bermeo and Bakio, a steep, rocky islet rises out of the Atlantic, tethered to the mainland by a narrow stone bridge and crowned by a small hermitage dedicated to Saint John the Baptist. The approach is the spectacle: a stairway of 241 steps that zigzags along the spine of the rock, doubling back on itself over the surf, until it arrives at the chapel some 80 metres above the sea.
Did you know? According to tradition, hollows in the steps are Saint John's footprints, and placing one's feet in them is said to cure corns.
03 Batalha Monastery
Mosteiro da Batalha
Portugal · 9 km from Leiria39.659° N 8.826° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by josefko48 from Pixabay The Monastery of Batalha is a promise kept in stone. Before the Battle of Aljubarrota in 1385, King John I vowed a great church to the Virgin if Portugal defeated Castile; the victory secured the country's independence, and work began the following year.
Did you know? According to tradition, the chapter house vault was thought so dangerous that condemned prisoners were set to work on it.
04 St. Bartholomew's Church, Berchtesgaden
St. Bartholomä
Germany · 30 km from Salzburg47.545° N 12.973° E
Image by bc_dues from Pixabay St. Bartholomä is a small pilgrimage church on the small Hirschau peninsula, halfway along the western shore of the Königssee in the Berchtesgaden Alps. Its red onion domes set against dark water and the huge east face of the Watzmann behind make it one of the classic images of the Bavarian Alps.
Did you know? In 1688 a boat carrying pilgrims across the Königssee capsized, and some 60 to 70 people drowned in the cold lake.
05 Necropolis of Pantalica
Pantalica
Italy · 28.1 km from Syracuse37.133° N 14.983° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Danny Krull · CC BY-SA 2.0 In the limestone gorges of southeastern Sicily, thousands of small rectangular openings honeycomb the cliffs like the cells of a vast hive. Each is the mouth of a tomb cut into the rock between roughly the thirteenth and the seventh centuries BC.
Did you know? No trace survives of the prehistoric houses; Paolo Orsi argued the people lived in light huts of wood, reeds and straw that weather simply erased.
06 Hill of Crosses
Kryžių kalnas
Lithuania · 10.3 km from Šiauliai56.015° N 23.417° E
Diliff · CC BY-SA 3.0 Nobody recorded the day the first cross went up here, but the likeliest account ties it to the failed uprising of 1831 against Russian rule, when families who couldn't find or bury their dead began planting crosses on the site of an old fort instead — a place to mourn people the state had made it impossible to properly grieve. There is no cemetery here.
Did you know? Pope John Paul II prayed at the hill on 7 September 1993, and the following year he sent a crucifix of his own, which now stands among the crosses.
07 Catacombe dei Cappuccini
Italy · 1.9 km from Palermo38.112° N 13.339° E
Giacomo Palermo · CC BY-SA 4.0 Beneath the Capuchin friary in Palermo lies one of Europe's most unsettling burial places: corridors lined with the dressed, dried and upright bodies of Palermitans who died between the late sixteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Did you know? Brother Silvestro of Gubbio, the first friar laid here on 16 October 1599, still lies first on the left after the entrance.
08 Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela
Catedral Basílica Metropolitana de Santiago de Compostela
Spain · 0.4 km from Santiago de Compostela42.881° N 8.544° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by ELG21 from Pixabay The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela is the end of the Way of St James, and for more than a thousand years pilgrims have walked across Europe to reach the tomb believed to hold the apostle James the Great. Tradition says the grave was rediscovered around 814, when a hermit saw lights over a forest; a chapel and then larger churches followed.
Did you know? At the foot of the Pórtico da Gloria kneels a figure believed to be Master Mateo himself, popularly called the Santo dos Croques.
09 Catacomb of Priscilla
Catacombe di Priscilla
Italy · 4.2 km from Rome41.930° N 12.509° E
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain Beneath the Via Salaria, on the northern side of Rome, lies one of the richest of the city's early Christian cemeteries. The Catacomb of Priscilla was dug from an ancient quarry and grew into many kilometres of galleries on two levels, used for burials from the late second century into the fourth.
10 Temppeliaukio Church
Finland · 1.1 km from Helsinki60.173° N 24.925° E
Link · CC BY 2.5 Helsinki tried three times to build something on this particular outcrop of granite before anything got finished. A competition in the 1930s went nowhere; a second one, won by architect J. S. Sirén, was interrupted when the Second World War started in 1939 and never resumed.
Did you know? In July 1968 Christian students painted BIAFRA across the unfinished church in protest at its cost; one of their paintings is still kept in the basement.
11 Sanctuary of Bom Jesus do Monte
Santuário do Bom Jesus do Monte
Portugal · 3.7 km from Braga41.555° N 8.377° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Botafogo · Public domain Above Braga, on a wooded hill at Tenões, a monumental staircase zigzags up through the trees for 116 metres to a church at the top. Bom Jesus do Monte is less a church than a climb turned into architecture: a Baroque Via Sacra in which the pilgrim's ascent is the whole point. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019, and its design was copied from Lamego in Portugal to Congonhas in Brazil.
Did you know? Each fountain of the Five Senses stairway shows a figure spouting water from the relevant organ: from the eyes, the ears, the nose and the mouth.
12 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 epitaphs name three stonemasons, Miogost, Bolašin Bogačić and Ratko Brativonić, and Miogost described himself simply as a smith.
More about Necropolis of stecci at Radimlja, the historic site →
13 Santa Maria dell'Isola Monastery
Santuario di Santa Maria dell'Isola
Italy · 17.9 km from Vibo Valentia38.680° N 15.896° E
Walter Della Schiava · CC BY-SA 3.0 Below the cliff-top old town of Tropea, on Calabria's Tyrrhenian coast, a small church crowns a sandstone rock that was once entirely surrounded by the sea, which is why the place is still called the island. The pale facade, the central bell tower and the pinnacles stand against open water and sky, and a stairway cut into the rock around 1810 climbs from the beach to the church door.
Did you know? Tradition holds that Eastern monks first settled the rock as a hermit community dedicated to Saint Menas, long before it became a Marian church.
14 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 Sacro Monte di Oropa is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Sacred Mountains of Piedmont and Lombardy.
15 Tombs of the Kings, Paphos
Τάφοι των Βασιλέων
Cyprus · 2.8 km from Paphos34.776° N 32.405° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by dimitrisvetsikas1969 from Pixabay The Tombs of the Kings is a large necropolis on the coast just north of Paphos harbour, where the dead of Hellenistic and Roman Paphos were buried in chambers cut out of the solid rock. Despite the name, no kings lie here. The tombs belonged to the town's aristocracy and high officials, and the grandeur of the largest of them gave the site its name.
Did you know? The name is doubly misleading: by the time these tombs were cut, the old city-kingdoms of Cyprus had already ceased to exist.
16 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 catacombs lie beneath the Sanità district, a valley long nicknamed the Valley of the Dead for its many burial grounds.
17 Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua
Basilica di Sant'Antonio di Padova
Italy · 34.3 km from Venice45.401° N 11.881° E
Image by sferrario1968 from Pixabay Padua calls it simply "il Santo", and the basilica built over the tomb of St Anthony is one of the great pilgrimage churches of Europe. Its skyline is unforgettable and unlike anything else in Italy: a cluster of domes, raised high on drums in the manner of St Mark's in Venice, crowd together above a brick body of gables, buttresses and slender belfries that recall minarets.
18 Catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter
Catacombe dei Santi Marcellino e Pietro
Italy · 6 km from Rome41.879° N 12.549° E
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain The Catacombs of Saints Marcellinus and Peter lie beneath the Via Casilina, at the third mile of the ancient Via Labicana, and together with the imperial mausoleum above them form one of the richest ensembles of early Christian Rome. 5 km of passages on several levels.
19 Catacombs of Domitilla
Catacombe di Domitilla
Italy · 4.8 km from Rome41.859° N 12.506° E
Anonymous Unknown author · Public domain Beneath the fields and lanes south of Rome's ancient walls, the volcanic tuff is threaded with one of the largest underground cemeteries of the early Church.
Did you know? The Catacombs of Domitilla are among the largest underground cemeteries in Rome, with galleries on four levels.
20 Madonna della Corona Sanctuary (Spiazzi)
Santuario della Madonna della Corona
Italy · 25.5 km from Verona45.650° N 10.856° E
Misasar · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Crown, the Madonna della Corona, seems to hang in mid-air. It is built into a sheer limestone wall on the eastern flank of Monte Baldo, at 774 metres, with a vertical drop below it to the valley of the Adige and an overhang of rock above it like a lid, so that from a distance the white church looks wedged into a crack of the mountain.
Did you know? The traditional pilgrim path from Brentino in the valley climbs more than 1,500 steps to reach the sanctuary.
21 Fontanelle cemetery
Cimitero delle Fontanelle
Italy · 1.8 km from Naples40.858° N 14.239° E
Lalupa · CC BY-SA 3.0 Rows of skulls, many thousands of them, line the galleries of a former tuff quarry cut into the hillside of Materdei, at the western end of the Sanità valley in Naples.
Did you know? According to legend, the skull called the Captain has one blackened eye socket and avenged insults by appearing at the offenders' weddings.
22 Basilica Shrine of Our Lady of Mondovi
Santuario di Vicoforte
Italy44.363° N 7.863° E
Mattis · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Sanctuary of Vicoforte, near Mondovì in Piedmont, is crowned by the largest elliptical dome in the world: an oval shell about 37 metres long and 25 metres wide on its axes, rising to some 74 metres above the floor. Inside, the whole vault is covered with a single continuous fresco cycle of more than six thousand square metres, so that standing beneath it one looks up into an unbroken painted sky.
Did you know? When the elliptical dome was finished, Francesco Gallo is said to have removed the scaffolding himself, because nobody else believed it would stand.
23 Capuchin Crypt
Italy · 1 km from Rome41.905° N 12.489° E
Anil Öztas · CC BY 4.0 Beneath the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini, a few steps from Piazza Barberini, a narrow corridor runs past a row of small chapels whose walls, vaults and lamps are made entirely of human bones. Skulls are stacked into arches and niches, while pelvises, leg bones and smaller bones are worked into patterns that cover the walls and ceilings.
Did you know? The bone decoration is credited to a friar, Father Michael of Bergamo, who arranged the remains in the crypt.
24 Anta de Pavia
Portugal · 38.3 km from Évora38.894° N 8.017° W
Alvaro Azevedo Moura · CC0 In the middle of the village square of Pavia, surrounded by paving and parked cars, stands one of the largest megalithic tombs of the Iberian Peninsula, wearing the disguise of a village chapel.
Did you know? Vergílio Correia's 1914 excavation turned up an ornate slate idol, schist plaques, stone axes and pottery, now in Lisbon's National Museum of Archaeology.
25 Țipova Monastery
Mănăstirea Țipova
Moldova47.603° N 28.985° E
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0 Țipova is the largest cave monastery in Moldova and one of the largest in Eastern Europe: a honeycomb of churches, cells and passages cut into a limestone cliff high above the right bank of the Dniester. The complex extends over three levels about a hundred metres above the river, with more than twenty chambers linked by tunnels, galleries and stairways, its windows and doorways opening onto the river valley.
Did you know? The earliest written mention of monks here is a document dated 13 November 1699 that concerns the storage of bread.
26 Église monolithe, Saint-Émilion
Église monolithe de Saint-Émilion
France · 35.1 km from Bordeaux44.893° N 0.156° W
Didier Descouens · CC BY-SA 4.0 Beneath the squares of Saint-Émilion lies the largest underground church in Europe, hollowed out of the limestone hill on which the medieval town is built. From the market square you see only a Gothic portal and some tall windows set into the rock face, with a bell tower rising above.
Did you know? The underground church measures about 38 metres in length, and until the French Revolution it served as the parish church of Saint-Émilion.
27 Crypt of the Original Sin
Cripta del Peccato Originale
Italy40.618° N 16.557° E
Circolo La Scaletta · Public domain Hidden in a cave on the side of a ravine outside Matera, the Crypt of the Original Sin holds one of the most remarkable cycles of early medieval wall painting in southern Italy, so complete and so vivid that it has been called the Sistine Chapel of rock-cut art.
Did you know? The Genesis cycle opens with the creation of Light and Darkness, shown not as abstract shapes but as a woman and a man.
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 Europe?
- On our list, Catacombs of Paris (France) ranks first, followed by San Juan de Gaztelugatxe (Spain) and Batalha Monastery (Portugal).
- Which country has the most sacred places in Europe?
- In our collection, the most come from Italy (14), Portugal (3) and France (2).
- Why are there so many crosses on the Hill of Crosses?
- Pilgrims have placed crosses on the hill near Šiauliai since at least the 19th century, as acts of faith, remembrance and petition. During the Soviet period the crosses were repeatedly removed, and each time people returned to put up new ones.
- What is buried in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela?
- According to tradition, the cathedral holds the remains of Saint James the Great, one of the twelve apostles. This belief made Santiago the goal of the Camino de Santiago, one of the great pilgrimage routes of medieval Europe.
- How was Temppeliaukio Church built?
- Architects Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen designed the church to be excavated directly into a granite outcrop in Helsinki. The rough rock forms the walls, and a ring of skylights separates them from the copper-lined dome.
- How many sacred places are on this list in Europe?
- The list covers 27 sacred places in 10 countries. Italy has the most, with 14.