The spread of faiths across continents and centuries — the holy cities where they began and the roads along which they travelled.
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The westward spread of Christianity from its Judean cradle: Paul's journeys through Antioch and Alexandria, the founding of the great sees of Constantinople and Rome, and the faith's long reach across the Mediterranean to the edge of Europe.
Jerusalem → Antioch → Alexandria → Constantinople → Rome → Córdoba
From the hijra between Mecca and Medina, Islam spread within a century across a vast arc — through Damascus and Baghdad in the east and along North Africa to Córdoba in the west, carrying Arabic and its learning with it.
Mecca → Medina → Damascus → Baghdad
The western wing of the conquest, sweeping across North Africa and the sea to Iberia, where Islamic Spain became a centre of philosophy, medicine, and the transmission of Greek learning back to Europe.
Damascus → Córdoba
The southern transmission of Buddhism from its Indian heartland to Sri Lanka, where the Theravada tradition and the Pali canon were preserved and from which the teaching later spread across Southeast Asia.
Bodh Gaya → Sarnath → Anuradhapura
The northern transmission that carried Buddhism from the Indian universities over the mountains and Silk Road oases to China, and on to Korea and Japan — the longest missionary journey of the ancient world.
Nalanda → Lhasa → Bukhara → Luoyang → Nara
The sacred geography of the Ganges plain, dense with pilgrimage cities, where Hinduism grew from the Vedic tradition into the living faith of a subcontinent across three thousand years.
Varanasi → Ayodhya
The eastward reach of Chinese thought: Confucian ethics and Daoist mysticism radiating from their heartland through the capitals of China and across the sea to Korea and Japan, shaping the moral order of East Asia.
Qufu → Luoyang → Nara
Sacred to three faiths at once: site of the Jewish Temple, the crucifixion and resurrection at the heart of Christianity, and the rock from which Muhammad is said to have ascended. No city has been prayed toward by more of humanity.
The birthplace of Muhammad and the holiest city of Islam, home of the Kaaba toward which more than a billion Muslims turn in daily prayer and the destination of the hajj pilgrimage.
The round city of the Abbasid caliphs and the intellectual heart of the medieval Islamic world, where the House of Wisdom translated Greek, Persian, and Indian learning and reshaped it for the world.
The Christian capital that Constantine raised on the Bosporus, seat of the Orthodox Church for a thousand years and the city from which Byzantine missionaries carried the faith and the Cyrillic alphabet to the Slavs.
The imperial capital that persecuted the early Christians and then adopted their faith, becoming the seat of the Western Church. From here Latin Christianity spread across all of Europe.
The holiest city of Hinduism on the banks of the Ganges, where pilgrims come to bathe in the sacred river and to die, believing that death here releases the soul from the cycle of rebirth.
The place where Siddhartha Gautama sat beneath the Bodhi tree and attained enlightenment, becoming the Buddha. The single most sacred site of Buddhism, from which the teaching spread across Asia.
The birthplace of Confucius, whose teaching on virtue, ritual, and the ordering of society became the moral backbone of Chinese civilization and shaped every state from Korea to Vietnam.
The city to which Muhammad emigrated in the hijra of 622, the event that begins the Islamic calendar. Here the first Muslim community was formed and the Prophet is buried.
One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth and the first great capital of the Islamic empire under the Umayyads, from which the new faith and its Arabic learning spread west across Africa and into Spain.
The great Syrian city where, the Book of Acts says, the followers of Jesus were first called Christians, and the base from which Paul launched his missions into the Greek and Roman world.
The Egyptian metropolis where Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek and Christian theologians forged the doctrines of the early Church — a meeting point of Jewish, Greek, and Christian thought.
The jewel of Islamic Spain, where for centuries Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived and studied side by side, and Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin learning flowed together into medieval Europe.
Ceremonial capital of the Persian empire and heartland of Zoroastrianism, the ancient dualist faith of Ahura Mazda whose ideas of a cosmic struggle between light and dark shaped the religions that came after.
The great Buddhist monastic university that drew thousands of monks from across Asia, its library so vast it was said to have burned for months — a beacon of learning whose pilgrims carried texts home to China and Tibet.
The spiritual centre of Sikhism, founded in the Punjab where Guru Nanak's teaching of one God beyond ritual and caste took root. Its Golden Temple, open on four sides, welcomes all comers.
The ancient capital of Sri Lanka where Buddhism was received from India and the Pali canon first written down, becoming the stronghold of the Theravada tradition that spread across Southeast Asia.
The high Himalayan seat of Tibetan Buddhism, where the Vajrayana tradition fused Indian teaching with local practice, and the Potala Palace rose as the home of the Dalai Lamas.
An ancient Chinese capital and the gateway through which Buddhism entered China along the Silk Road, where the first Buddhist temple in China was founded and Indian sutras were first translated into Chinese.
The first permanent capital of Japan and the eastern terminus of Buddhism's long march across Asia, where the faith arrived from China and Korea and the Great Buddha of Tōdai-ji was cast in bronze.
A great Silk Road oasis where Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Manichaean, Christian, and finally Islamic communities met and mingled — a crossroads where the faiths of east and west traded travellers as freely as goods.
The legendary birthplace of Rama and setting of the Ramayana epic, one of the seven holiest pilgrimage sites of Hinduism and a city woven deep into the religious imagination of India.
The deer park where the Buddha preached his first sermon and set in motion the 'wheel of the law', founding the community of monks that would carry Buddhism out into the world.