Site type guide
Cave
Sacred caves often hold associations with retreat, revelation, ancestors, saints, meditation, initiation, and the felt threshold between landscape and mystery.
28 cave sacred sites. Use the country and tradition filters to narrow in.
Atlas summary
Cave sacred sites overview
Cave sacred sites span countries, traditions, pilgrimage routes, and sacred landscapes represented in the Pilgrim Map atlas.
Use this guide to compare major country clusters, represented traditions, UNESCO-tagged places, and the map distribution before opening individual site pages.
| Coverage | 28 cave sacred sites across the current atlas. |
|---|---|
| Major countries | |
| Traditions | |
| UNESCO heritage | 2 UNESCO-tagged cave sites appear in this browse view. |
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28
Showing 1-28 of 28 sites in this site-type guide
Ajanta caves, Maharashtra
Phardapur, Maharashtra, India
In a horseshoe gorge of the Deccan Plateau, Buddhist monks spent seven centuries carving thirty caves from the basalt cliffs....
Altamira Cave
Santillana del Mar, Santillana del Mar, Cantabria, Spain
Above Santillana del Mar in Cantabria, a cave ceiling holds bison, horses, and a doe painted in polychrome ochre and manganese, the oldest marks on its walls dated to more...
Badami Cave Temples, Badami, Karnataka
Badami, Karnataka, India
Cut into a cliff above Agastya Lake at Badami, ancient Vatapi, four rock-cut caves hold the gods in monumental form: Shiva dancing and Vishnu striding the cosmos in three...
Burg Teck, Cave of Sybillenloch
Owen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
On a limestone peak rising from the Swabian Alb, a ruined castle guards a cave where legend says a wise woman once lived and foretold the future....
Cave of La Pileta
Benaoján, Benaoján, Málaga, Andalusia, Spain
Discovered by a farmer searching for bat guano in 1905, Cueva de la Pileta in Málaga province holds hundreds of paintings and engravings made across an extraordinary span...
Cave of the Seven Sleepers, Jordan
Al Rajib, Amman, Jordan
In the village of ar-Rajib east of Amman, a small rock-cut cave holds a cluster of stone sarcophagi and, above its mouth, a mosque....
Cave Sanctuary of Es Culleram
Sant Joan de Labritja, Sant Joan de Labritja, Ibiza, Spain
In the hills above Cala Sant Vicent, a natural cave subdivided by ancient water action became one of the western Mediterranean's most important Punic sanctuaries....
Cennet and Cehennem
Narlıkuyu / Silifke, Mersin, Mediterranean Region, Turkey
Cennet and Cehennem are paired karst sinkholes on the Cilician coast: one lush and accessible, leading down 300 steps to a Byzantine cave chapel; one dark, sheer-walled,...
Chapel of Our Lady of the Crag, Knaresborough, England
Knaresborough, England, United Kingdom
Hewn from sandstone cliffs above the River Nidd in 1408, the Chapel of Our Lady of the Crag stands as one of Britain's oldest wayside shrines....
Chapel of Saint Mary Magdalene
Monistrol-d'Allier, France
Above Monistrol-d'Allier, a neoclassical facade seals a basalt rock cavity to form a troglodyte chapel dedicated to Mary Magdalene, the saint of grottoes and penitence....
Cova del Bisbe
Sencelles, Sencelles, Mallorca, Spain
Cova del Bisbe, more fully known as the Cova del Camp del Bisbe, is a natural cave near Sencelles in central Mallorca used as a collective burial site from roughly 1600 to...
Covalanas Cave
Ramales de la Victoria, Ramales de la Victoria, Cantabria, Spain
Covalanas Cave holds one of Cantabria's clearest surviving galleries of Paleolithic art: red ochre hinds built from dabbed fingertip dots rather than continuous lines,...
Diktaion Andron Cave
Psichro, Region of Crete, Greece
High on the slopes of Mount Dicte, above the enclosed bowl of the Lassithi Plateau, the Diktaion Andron opens into the limestone of Crete like a wound in the surface of...
El Castillo Cave
Puente Viesgo, Puente Viesgo, Cantabria, Spain
On a hillside above Puente Viesgo, El Castillo Cave preserves more than 150,000 years of intermittent human presence and a red ochre disk dated to over 40,800 years old —...
El Pindal Cave
Ribadedeva, Ribadedeva, Asturias, Spain
El Pindal Cave opens above the Cantabrian coast near Ribadedeva, Asturias, its narrow gallery carrying Magdalenian-period paintings made roughly 18,000 to 13,000 years ago....
Ellora caves, Maharashtra
Khuldabad, Maharashtra, India
Over four centuries, Buddhist monks, Hindu devotees, and Jain ascetics carved 34 temples and monasteries into a basalt cliff in western India—side by side, in the same...
Fingal’s Cave, Island of Staffa, Scotland
Staffa Island, Alba / Scotland, United Kingdom
On the uninhabited island of Staffa, a sea cave lined with hexagonal basalt columns has drawn pilgrims for over two centuries....
Fugoppe Cave
Yoichi, Hokkaidō, Japan
Carved into the walls of a small sea-facing cave near Yoichi, approximately 800 petroglyphs have puzzled scholars since their discovery in 1950....
Holy Cave of the Apocalypse
Between Skala and Chora, Patmos, Greece
In this small cave on Patmos, tradition holds that Saint John received the Book of Revelation nearly two thousand years ago....
Kamares Cave
Tybakio Municipal Unit, Region of Crete, Greece
High on the southern face of Mount Ida, the highest mountain in Crete, a vast arched entrance opens into the mountain at nearly 1,700 meters....
Las Monedas Cave
Puente Viesgo, Puente Viesgo, Cantabria, Spain
Discovered in 1952 on the same hillside as El Castillo, Las Monedas holds a Magdalenian-period animal panel drawn in charcoal roughly 12,000 to 13,000 years ago —...
Mother Shipton’s Cave, Knaresborough, England
Knaresborough, England, United Kingdom
At the edge of Knaresborough, where the River Nidd carves through ancient limestone, a cave opens into legend....
Parque Nacional Cavernas do Peruaçu
Januária, Brazil
In the limestone canyons of northern Minas Gerais, more than 3,000 prehistoric paintings cover the walls of caves that reach cathedral heights....
Pirunpesä
Kurikka, Jalasjärvi / Kurikka – South Ostrobothnia, Finland
Pirunpesä is a near-perfectly round, steep pit weathered deep into solid granite atop a hill in South Ostrobothnia....
St. Fillan’s Cave, Pittenweem, Scotland
Pittenweem, Alba / Scotland, United Kingdom
Beneath the fishing village of Pittenweem lies a cave where the Irish missionary Fillan once prayed in solitude, his glowing arm said to illuminate the scriptures in...
Susiluola
Karijoki / Kristiinankaupunki, Karijoki / Kristiinankaupunki area – South Ostrobothnia / Ostrobothnia, Finland
Susiluola, the Wolf Cave, is a rock fissure on the Ostrobothnian coast where stone fragments and hearth soot recovered in 1996-2004 were claimed by their excavators as...
Tito Bustillo Cave
Ribadesella, Ribadesella, Asturias, Spain
Rediscovered in 1968 after a rockfall had sealed its entrance, Tito Bustillo holds Upper Paleolithic art spanning some 20,000 years, from a 33,000-year-old androgynous...
Yanglesho Cave
Pharping, Bagmati Province, Nepal
In this cave near Pharping, Guru Padmasambhava and his Nepali consort Shakyadevi practiced the most profound tantric sadhanas and attained the Mahamudra vidyadhara...
Key questions
Cave sacred-site questions
- What cave sacred sites are included?
- Cave sacred sites are places where this site type carries religious, ritual, cultural, or pilgrimage significance. This guide lists 28 in the current Pilgrim Map atlas.
- Where are these cave sites located?
- Major country clusters include Spain, United Kingdom, Greece, India, Finland, Brazil.
- Which traditions are represented?
- Traditions represented here include Prehistoric/Megalithic, Christianity, Ancient Greek and Roman, Buddhism, Hinduism, Indigenous.
- Can I view cave sacred sites on a map?
- Yes. Compare the country and tradition clusters, switch to map view for geography, then use site pages for practical context and related places.