CategoriesDesign Concepts and Techniques
Religious Building
Temples, churches, mosques, synagogues, shrines and monasteries, built across history to house worship, ritual and community.
12 works · 10 related artists
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Worship has drawn out the most ambitious architecture of almost every culture. In Athens, Iktinos and Kallikrates designed the marble Parthenon (447–432 BC) for the goddess Athena. In Java, Borobudur (9th century) arranged Buddhist teaching as terraces that pilgrims climb, and in Cambodia Angkor Wat (12th century) modelled the cosmos in stone. At Ise in Japan the main Shinto shrine buildings are rebuilt in timber every twenty years. Mimar Sinan's Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul (1550–57) raised a vast dome over an open prayer hall.
In Europe, Baldassare Longhena's Santa Maria della Salute in Venice, Christopher Wren's St Paul's Cathedral and Balthasar Neumann's pilgrimage church of Vierzehnheiligen each staged light and movement for ritual. Modern architects kept the tradition alive, from Le Corbusier's chapel at Ronchamp (1955) to Tadao Ando's Church of the Light (1989). Look at orientation, the path from entrance to sacred centre, and how daylight is admitted.