Sacred Spaces

An ideal wedding spot that is almost too ideal.

New England's "Witches of Eastwick" locations, in all of their quaint white churched glory.

Stalin's march toward a more modern USSR flooded a monastery, leaving a unique and extravagant nautical marker, "The Flooded Belfry."

An underground city of salt.

This peaceful, round shrine in the middle of the Sri Lankan jungle acts as a beacon of peace.

One of the oldest masonic museums in Paris.

Tombstones buried in overgrown grass mark the deceased occupants of this abandoned graveyard.

A cave covered with bizarre stalactites of cloth.

Abandoned limestone cave was once a sacred place of worship.

An 18-meter-long sarcophagus of a constantly growing dead prophet.

An ancient jungle temple carved into a rocky overhang of the Dane Soung Plateau.

Once an impressive link to Afghanistan’s Buddhist past, now a sad reminder of intolerance towards other cultures.

The site where Charles Dickens gave his first public reading of "A Christmas Carol" in the US.

Highly unusual subterranean stupa and adjacent cave monastery.

Devoted Buddhists can earn enlightenment in the next life by crawling through this symbolic nostril.

This complex of vertically-excavated Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu monolithic temples in India's Maharashtra providence illustrates a spirit of tolerance characteristic of ancient India.

Detailed sandstone carvings show an array of symbolism and adorable animals.

The sci-fi villain is a little-known inhabitant of the U.S. capital's largest cathedral.