Temples

Home to 800-year-old zen basin, a 400-year-old pilgrim’s path, and a century-old industrial grotto.

A unique Buddhist temple with strange statues, beehives, and dinosaurs.

This enormous gold Buddha statue was hidden inside a stucco decoy for centuries.

Home to a legend of the supernatural raccoon dog, a rare wooden structure of Edo, and witnesses of the Tokyo bombings.

This lesser-visited gallery in a corner of the Tokyo National Museum complex is an architectural beauty dedicated to the ancient treasures of Hōryū-ji.

The origin of this bizarre, ghostly idol is a local mystery, even to the temple it calls home.

Every year, massive crowds flock to this 300-year-old temple to celebrate a unique, goddess-centric Hindu festival.

After an Illinois church was struck by lightning and burned down, Frank Lloyd Wright designed this replacement.

Ornate and vibrant, this temple is a colorful place of worship for Columbus's Thai and Laotian communities.

Once a passageway that led to the Shaniwar Wada palace fort.

A giant man-eating crab monster allegedly left its claw marks on this unassuming boulder.

A Buddhist monastery tucked away in the mountains of Colorado.

An off-the-beaten-path monastery in the northern hills of Ulaanbaatar.

Said to be the oldest tree in Pune.

A most unusual war memorial, erected by some most unusual people, made of concrete and stained glass, and apparently honouring five people and a dog.

Visiting this grotto is symbolic of a spiritual journey into Nirvana.

A temple complex has existed on this site since the third century.

Hundreds of statues of Buddha’s disciples meditating, napping, sneezing, and picking their noses.