10 Most Beautiful Churches of the World

Las Lajas Cathedral

Las Lajas Sanctuary is a minor basilica church located in the southern Colombian Department of Nariño, municipality of Ipiales and built inside the canyon of the Guáitara River.The present church was built-in Gothic Revival style in 1949. The name Laja comes from the name of a type of flat sedimentary rock similar to shale.

 Notre Dame du Haut

The chapel of Notre Dame du Haut, designed by Le Corbusier, is located in Ronchamp. The Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut, a shrine for the Catholic Church at Ronchamp was built for a reformist Church looking to continue its relevancy. Warning against decadence, reformers within the Church looked to renew its spirit by embracing modern art and architecture as representative concepts. Father Couturier, who would also sponsor Le Corbusier for the La Tourette commission, steered the unorthodox project to completion in 1954.

 Jubilee Church

The Jubilee Church, formally known as Dio Padre Misericordioso, is a church and community center in Tor Tre Teste in Rome. According to Richard Meier, its architect, it is “the crown jewel of the Vicariato di Roma’s (Archdiocese of Rome) Millennium project” (p. 354). The Church serves eight thousand residents of the Tor Tre Teste area and was meant to socially “revive” Tor Tre Teste. It is paid homage to in the video game Hitman: Blood Money, with a very similar church as the setting of the game’s final mission.

 Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia is a former Orthodox patriarchal basilica, later a mosque, and now a museum in Istanbul, Turkey. From the date of its dedication in 360 until 1453, it served as the Greek Patriarchal cathedral of Constantinople, except between 1204 and 1261, when it was converted to a Roman Catholic cathedral under the Latin Patriarch of Constantinople of the Western Crusader established Latin Empire. The building was a mosque from 29 May 1453 until 1931, when it was secularized. It was opened as a museum on 1 February 1935.

 St. Basil’s Cathedral

The Cathedral of the Protection of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat popularly known as Saint Basil’s Cathedral is a Russian Orthodox church erected on the Red Square in Moscow in 1555–61. Built on the order of Ivan the Terrible to commemorate the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan, it marks the geometric centre of the city and the hub of its growth since the 14th century. It was the tallest building in Moscow until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in 1600.

 The Crystal Cathedral

The Crystal Cathedral is a Christian church building in Garden Grove, Orange County, California, United States. The building, designed by architect Philip Johnson, was completed in 1981 and seats 2,736 people.Since its construction the building has been the principal place of worship for Crystal Cathedral Ministries, a Protestant Christian church organization founded in 1955 by Robert H. Schuller and affiliated with the Reformed Church in America.

  Notre Dame

Notre Dame de  also known as Notre Dame Cathedral or simply Notre Dame, is a Gothic, Roman Catholic cathedral on the eastern half of the Île de la Cité in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, France. It is the cathedral of the Catholic Archdiocese of Paris: that is, it is the church that contains the cathedra (official chair) of the Archbishop of Paris, currently André Vingt-Trois. The cathedral treasury houses a reliquary with the purported Crown of Thorns.

 Sagrada Família

The Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família commonly known as the Sagrada Família, is a large Roman Catholic church in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, designed by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926). Although incomplete, the church is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and in November 2010 was consecrated and proclaimed a minor basilica by Pope Benedict XVI.

 Hallgrimskirkja

The Hallgrímskirkja  is a Lutheran (Church of Iceland) parish church in Reykjavík, Iceland. At 74.5 metres (244 ft), it is the largest church in Iceland and the sixth tallest architectural structure in Iceland after Longwave radio mast Hellissandur, the radio masts of US Navy at Grindavík, Eiðar longwave transmitter and Smáratorg tower. The church is named after the Icelandic poet and clergyman Hallgrímur Pétursson (1614 to 1674), author of the Passion Hymns.

St. Peter’s Basilica

The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter , officially known in Italian as Basilica Papale di San Pietro in Vaticano and commonly known as Saint Peter’s Basilica, is a Late Renaissance church located within the Vatican City. Saint Peter’s Basilica has the largest interior of any Christian church in the world. While it is neither the official mother church of the Roman Catholic Church nor the cathedral of the Pope as Bishop of Rome, Saint Peter’s is regarded as one of the holiest Catholic sites. It has been described as “holding a unique position in the Christian world” and as “the greatest of all churches of Christendom”.