Sacred Spaces

Birthplace of the Tendai sect and home to the marathon monks.

The crypt of the imposing Stephensdom holds royal intestines and thousands of skeletons.

For hundreds of years, automatons moving to metallic music have been marking the passage of time.

An ossuary built in 1210 to collect bones from the Ospedale Maggiore of Milan.

The body of St. John Neumann and his collection of hundreds of relics, on display in a Philly church.

Now containing the bones of the actual conquistador, instead of someone else.

An unusual round church in London with a Templar past.

A tiny church on a man-made island in the Adriatic.

This Stone Age solar temple aligns with the sun on each equinox and solstice.

A chapel on a volcanic core, marking the end of a successful journey.

A Gothic cathedral created from volcanic rocks.

This church, buried halfway in lava rock, is all that remains of a Mexican village destroyed by a volcano.

A Turkish monastery tucked into a cliff wall.

Deep in the Thar desert, a temple crawling with thousands of holy rats.

Ancient catacombs form the foundation for this Rococo orgy of a church.

This 1,300 year old monastery built atop a single rock was once only accessible depending on the whims of the tide.

A huge cathedral single-handedly constructed by one eccentric monk.

Between Neo-Pagans and Neo-Nazis, these strange rock formations have a curious cult following and a very strange history.