Multi-tradition

Adada

Isparta, Turkey

Adada is among the best-preserved and least-visited ancient cities of inland Turkey, its three temple facades still standing against the Taurus foothills after nearly two...

Ahlat Urartian remains

Bitlis, Turkey

Ahlat on the northwestern shore of Lake Van is one of the least-visited and most extraordinary sacred landscapes in Turkey....

Aléria

Haute-Corse, France

Aléria is the most historically layered site in Corsica — a city founded by Phocaean Greeks around 565 BCE, contested by Etruscans and Carthaginians, conquered by Rome,...

Alexandria Troas

Çanakkale, Turkey

Alexandria Troas was the largest and most strategically important port on the northwest Anatolian coast — a city of four hundred thousand founded at the crossroads of...

Anazarbus

Adana, Turkey

Anazarbus rises from the Cilician plain on a rocky mesa — a city that has been fortress, oracle site, imperial metropolis, and Armenian capital in succession....

Andriake

Antalya, Turkey

Andriake was Myra's port and one of the busiest harbours on the Egypt-to-Rome grain route....

Antioch of Pisidia

Isparta, Turkey

At over a thousand meters on the Anatolian plateau, Antioch of Pisidia preserves the ruins of the Roman colonial city where Paul delivered one of his most consequential...

Ayazini

Afyonkarahisar, Turkey

In a volcanic tuff cliff in the Phrygian Valley, the Phrygians cut their dead into the rock, the Romans elaborated their chambers with classical facades, and Byzantine...

Baozhong Yimin Temple

Xinpu, Hsinchu County, Hsinchu County, Taiwan

Baozhong Yimin Temple in Xinpu, Hsinchu County, was built over the mass grave of more than two hundred Hakka militia and civilians who died defending their villages during...

Baxian Cave Archaeological Site

Changbin, Taitung County, Hualien County, Taiwan

Baxian Cave holds Taiwan's earliest known evidence of human habitation, a Paleolithic site tens of thousands of years old carved into sea cliffs on the east coast....

Çandarlı Castle

İzmir, Turkey

Çandarlı Castle stands on the Aegean waterfront at the tip of a small promontory north of İzmir — a 14th-century Genoese fortification rebuilt by the Ottoman Grand Vizier...

Castabala

Osmaniye, Turkey

Castabala was named Hieropolis — 'holy city' — because of the goddess who dwelt within it....

Cennet and Cehennem

Mersin, 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,...

Changhua Confucius Temple

Changhua City, Changhua County, Changhua County, Taiwan

No incense haze, no idols, no deity to petition — Changhua Confucius Temple holds a different kind of quiet....

Foça Castle

İzmir, Turkey

Foça Castle occupies the promontory at the entrance to Foça Bay where the ancient Phocaeans built the Temple of Athena — the oldest known Ionian temple — on an even older...

Harput Castle

Elazığ, Turkey

Harput Castle has drawn human devotion to this mountain above the eastern Anatolian plain for approximately four millennia — from Urartian fortress culture through...

Harran

Şanlıurfa, Turkey

Harran is one of the oldest continuously inhabited sacred cities on earth — the foremost temple of the Mesopotamian moon god Sin for four millennia, the place where...

Heraclea by Latmus

Muğla, Turkey

Heraclea by Latmus stands on the shore of Lake Bafa — a lake that was once an Aegean inlet — beneath the granite pinnacles of Beşparmak Mountain....

Heraclea Lyncestis

Bitola, North Macedonia

Founded by Philip II of Macedon around 358 BCE and abandoned after a catastrophic earthquake in 518 CE, Heraclea Lyncestis preserves nearly a millennium of sacred and...

Hierapolis-Pamukkale

Denizli, Turkey

Hierapolis-Pamukkale is a UNESCO World Heritage Site where three thousand years of sacred use converge: white calcium terraces formed by thermal springs, the ruins of a...

Kanlıdivane

Mersin, Turkey

At Kanlıdivane, an enormous karst sinkhole drops seventy metres into the Cilician limestone, and everything built here — a Hellenistic tower, four Byzantine basilicas, a...

Karadağ Monuments

Karaman, Turkey

Karadağ — the 'Black Mountain' — is an extinct volcanic massif in southern Konya that has drawn sacred attention for at least three thousand years....

Lantian Academy

Nantou City, Nantou County, Nantou County, Taiwan

In Nantou's old quarter, a courtyard building once taught imperial-exam candidates and now hosts their descendants seeking Wenchang Dijun's blessing....

Lukang Wenwu Temple

Lukang, Changhua County, Changhua County, Taiwan

Lukang Wenwu Temple pairs a shrine to Wenchang Dijun, god of literature, with a martial hall to Guan Gong, deified general of loyalty and strategy — a Qing-era civic...

Mt. Bagua Great Buddha

Changhua City, Changhua County, Changhua County, Taiwan

Rendered in dark, unusually solemn concrete rather than gilded gold, the Great Buddha of Mt....

Pergamon

İzmir, Turkey

Pergamon rises 330 metres above the Bakırçay plain on a natural acropolis that the Attalid kings transformed into one of the ancient world's densest concentrations of...

Red Basilica

İzmir, Turkey

The Red Basilica at Pergamon is one of the ancient world's most layered sacred spaces....

Santa Maria statue-menhir

Haute-Corse, France

At a crossroads in the Castagniccia village of Cambia, a slender schist standing stone has held its ground for millennia....

Sanxiantai

Chenggong, Taitung County, Taitung County, Taiwan

Sanxiantai is a rock island off Taiwan's east coast, severed from the mainland by centuries of erosion and reached today by a wave-shaped footbridge....

Sardis

Manisa, Turkey

Sardis was the capital of the Lydian Empire, the city where coinage was invented, and a site where Artemis, Cybele, Yahweh, and Christ each in turn held sacred space....

Sardis Temple of Artemis

Part of Sardis

Manisa, Turkey

Two surviving Ionic columns rising against the Lydian hills are what remains of the fourth largest temple in the ancient world — a structure that replaced a Lydian...

Scupi

Greater Skopje, North Macedonia

Scupi (Colonia Flavia Scupinorum) was the largest Roman settlement in what is now North Macedonia, established on a pre-Roman Dardanian foundation and elevated to colony...

Sillyon

Antalya, Turkey

Sillyon rises 200 metres above the Pamphylian coastal plain on a clifftop acropolis that was continuously inhabited from the Hittite period through the Ottoman era — a...

Simena

Antalya, Turkey

Simena, known today as Kaleköy, is a living village built across a Lycian acropolis above the sunken ruins of the Kekova coast....

Stobi

Rosoman, North Macedonia

Stobi is North Macedonia's largest archaeological park, set at the confluence of the Crna Reka and Vardar rivers south of Skopje....

Tainan Confucius Temple

West Central, Tainan City, Tainan, Taiwan

No painted door gods guard this temple's gates. Where most Taiwanese temples overwhelm with color and incense smoke, Tainan Confucius Temple offers shaded courtyards, old...

Tripolis on the Maeander

Denizli, Turkey

Tripolis on the Maeander stood at the precise meeting point of three ancient regions — Lydia, Phrygia, and Caria — a location that ancient geography understood as...

Xihua Temple, Tainan

West Central, Tainan City, Tainan, Taiwan

Xihua Tang is a Qing-dynasty vegetarian hall in Tainan's North District, home to the only surviving branch of the Jinchuang sect's Weng Yongfeng lineage....

Zerzevan Castle

Diyarbakır, Turkey

Zerzevan Castle, on Turkey's UNESCO Tentative List, holds one of the world's best-preserved Mithraea — a rock-cut underground chamber where Roman frontier soldiers enacted...