11 beautiful places to pray around the world

In Le Puy-en-Velay, in central France, a chapel to Saint Michael sits on a narrow plug of old lava more than 80 metres high, reached by 268 steps cut into the rock. Bishop Godescalc of Le Puy had it built after he came home from his pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela around 951, and it has stood on its needle for more than a thousand years.

Le Puy is still a starting point for pilgrims walking to Santiago. Climb in the morning, sit a while inside, and pray for everyone setting out on a long road.

Ostrog looks as if it had been poured into the rock face. Saint Basil of Ostrog, a seventeenth-century Metropolitan of Herzegovina, founded it high in the cliff of Ostroška Greda, and his relics rest in a small cave church.

It belongs to the Serbian Orthodox Church, yet Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim visitors all come to pray at Saint Basil’s relics. The most devoted pilgrims walk the road of about three kilometres from the Lower Monastery barefoot. Dress modestly and expect to wait your turn.

Twice a day the North Sea covers the causeway and Lindisfarne becomes an island again. In the 630s, Aidan came here from Iona at King Oswald’s request and founded the monastery from which the Gospel spread across Northumbria. Cuthbert was a monk and bishop here, the Lindisfarne Gospels were probably made here early in the eighth century, and in 793 the Vikings raided it. The priory ruins in the photograph came later, after the Normans; the parish church of St Mary beside them is still in use.

Check the safe crossing times before you go. At low tide, walkers can follow the posts of the old Pilgrims’ Way across the sands.

On a small peninsula on the western shore of the Königssee, at the foot of the Watzmann, stands the pilgrimage church of St. Bartholomä, its red domes bright against the dark forest. The first church here was built in 1134; its clover-shaped choir of three rounded apses dates from the late seventeenth century.

The only ways in are by boat from Schönau or by a hard alpine hike of several hours. Every year, on the first Saturday after Saint Bartholomew’s Day, pilgrims from Maria Alm in Austria cross the high plateau of the Steinernes Meer on foot to reach it.

The Chapel of the Holy Cross grows straight out of the red rock of Sedona, with a 90-foot iron cross set into its great window wall. Marguerite Brunswig Staude, a local rancher and sculptor, first imagined such a church in 1932, after seeing the newly built Empire State Building. It went up between 1954 and 1956, at the base of a 1,500-foot cliff.

It is a Catholic chapel of the Diocese of Phoenix, cared for by St. John Vianney Parish in Sedona. Come early, before the crowds, and look out at the valley through the cross.