Sacred river, lake, spring or sea

This category gathers the places traditions hold sacred or treat as centres of practice: temples, mountains, rivers, caves, oracles, stone circles and pilgrimage destinations. Each entry gives a location and the tradition or traditions for which the place is holy, and describes what is done there and why it is revered.

Sacredness is attached to places for many reasons (a theophany or miracle held to have occurred there, the presence of relics or a shrine, a striking feature of the landscape read as a sign, or long use as a site of ritual), and the entries record the grounds a tradition itself gives.

Many of the most important sites have been sacred to more than one tradition in succession or at once, and their history is one of reuse, sharing and sometimes conflict. A temple may stand where an older shrine stood; a single city or mountain may be holy to several religions with competing claims. The atlas records this layered history rather than assigning a place to one owner, and notes contested sites soberly.

The sites group by tradition (Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Indigenous and many more), so a browser can narrow from all sacred places to those of one culture.