This page groups sacred sites by how active they still are as pilgrimage destinations. Wikipedia notes that Santiago de Compostela "remains a significant pilgrimage site, with around 200,000 pilgrims, both secular and Christian, completing the numerous pilgrimage routes to the cathedral in 2012 alone." Browsing this way lets a visitor tell a heavily visited pilgrimage site apart from one now visited only rarely.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingPlaces of the Gospel narrative in the Holy Land, the tombs of apostles and saints, and the cathedrals, monasteries and shrines that grew from them. The group spans Catholic, Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Protestant Christianity, whose accounts of what makes a place holy differ sharply: the Reformation broke with relics and pilgrimage, so some members are holy to some Christians only. 2 Learn More
The holy places of Christianity
This group gathers the sacred sites of Christianity, the most numerous in the atlas, reflecting two thousand years of church-building, pilgrimage and the veneration of holy places across the globe. Christian sacred geography centres above all on the scenes of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus in the Holy Land, and radiates outward to the tombs of apostles and saints, great cathedrals and pilgrimage shrines.
The browser will find sites bound to the Gospel narrative in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, the apostolic centres of Rome and beyond, and the pilgrimage destinations that drew the medieval and modern faithful. The entries describe each place's religious associations and history across the different Christian traditions.
Pilgrimage Status
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Pilgrimage in Medieval England
Diana Webb, Hambledon and London, 2000
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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