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The Parthenon in Athens, Greece, was built for the goddess Athena in 447–432 BC and remained devoted to her cult for nearly a thousand years, later serving as a Christian church and then as an Islamic mosque under the Ottoman Empire.

A place of worship is a specially designed structure or consecrated space where individuals or a group of people such as a congregation come to perform acts of devotion, veneration, or religious study. A building constructed or used for this purpose is sometimes called a house of worship. Temples, churches, synagogues and mosques are examples of structures created for worship. A monastery, particularly for Buddhists, may serve both to house those belonging to religious orders and as a place of worship for visitors. Natural or topographical features may also serve as places of worship, and are considered holy or sacrosanct in some religions; the rituals associated with the Ganges river are an example in Hinduism.

Under International Humanitarian Law and the Geneva Conventions, religious buildings are offered special protection, similar to the protection guaranteed hospitals displaying the Red Cross or Red Crescent. These international laws of war bar firing upon or from a religious building.

Religious architecture expresses the religious beliefs, aesthetic choices, and economic and technological capacity of those who create or adapt it, and thus places of worship show great variety depending on time and place.

Buddhism

Wat Mahathat, Luang Prabang, Laos

• 
  Candi, Buddhist sanctuaries mostly built during the 1st to 21st centuries in Indonesia
  


• 
  Chaitya, a Buddhist shrine that includes a stupa
  


• 
  Jingū-ji, a religious complex in pre-Meiji Japan comprising a Buddhist temple and a local kami Shinto shrine


• 
  Vihara, a Buddhist monastery found abundantly in Bihar
  


• 
  Wat, the name for a monastery temple in Cambodia and Thailand
  

Christianity

The word church derives from the Greek ekklesia, meaning the called-out ones. Its original meaning is to refer to the body of believers, or the body of Christ.^[1] The word church is used to refer to a Christian place of worship by some Christian denominations, including Anglicans and Roman Catholics. Other Christian denominations, including the Religious Society of Friends, Mennonites, Christadelphians, and some unitarians, object to the use of the word "church" to refer to a building, as they argue that this word should be reserved for the body of believers who worship there.^[2] Instead, these groups use words such as "Hall" to identify their places of worship or any building in use by them for the purpose of assembly.

Chartres Cathedral

Roman Catholic church in Stupava (Slovakia)

• 
  Basilica (Roman Catholic)


• 
  Cathedral or minster (seat of a diocesan bishop within the Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican churches)


• 
  Chapel ("Capel" in Welsh) – Presbyterian Church of Wales (Calvinistic Methodism), and some other denominations, especially non-conformist denominations. In Catholicism and Anglicanism, some smaller and "private" places of worship are called chapels.


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  Church – Iglesia ni Cristo, Anglican, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, Protestant denominations


• 
  Kirk (Scottish–cognate with church)


• 
  Meeting House – Religious Society of Friends
  


• 
  Meeting House – Christadelphians
  

Interior of the Arch Street Friends Meeting House, Philadelphia

• 
  Meeting House and Temple – Mormons
  Latter-day Saints use meeting house and temple to denote two different types of buildings. Normal worship services are held in ward meeting houses (or chapels) while Mormon temples are reserved for special ordinances.


• 
  Temple – French Protestants
  Protestant denominations installed in France in the early modern era use the word temple (as opposed to church, supposed to be Roman Catholic); some more recently built temples are called church.


• 
  Orthodox temple – Orthodox Christianity (both Eastern and Oriental)
  an Orthodox temple is a place of worship with base shaped like Greek cross.


• 
  Kingdom Hall – Jehovah's Witnesses may apply the term in a general way to any meeting place used for their formal meetings for worship, but apply the term formally to those places established by and for local congregations of up to 200 adherents. Their multi-congregation events are typically held at a meeting place termed Assembly Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses (or Christian Convention Center of Jehovah's Witnesses).

Classical antiquity

The Temple of Hercules Victor, a Greek-style temple in the Forum Boarium in Rome

Ancient Greece

• 
  Greek temple, for religions in ancient Greece
  

Ancient Rome

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  Roman temple, for the religions of ancient Rome
  


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  Mithraeum, for the Mithraic mysteries
  

Hinduism

Hindu mass prayer in Ganges river.

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  Hindu temple (Mandir), Hinduism^[3]

Islam

A Mosque (/mɒsk/; from Arabic: المسجد Al-masjid‎) is a place of worship for followers of Islam.

Huseina Čauša džamija (a.k.a. Džindijska), 17th century traditional wooden mosque in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina

There are strict and detailed requirements in Sunni jurisprudence (fiqh) for a place of worship to be considered a masjid, with places that do not meet these requirements regarded as musallas. There are stringent restrictions on the uses of the area formally demarcated as the mosque (which is often a small portion of the larger complex), and, in the Islamic Sharia law, after an area is formally designated as a mosque, it remains so until the Last Day.

Many mosques have elaborate domes, minarets, and prayer halls, in varying styles of architecture. Mosques originated on the Arabian Peninsula, but are now found in all inhabited continents. The mosque serves as a place where Muslims can come together for salat (صلاة ṣalāt, meaning "prayer") as well as a center for information, education, social welfare, and dispute settlement. The imam leads the congregation in prayer.

Jainism

• 
  Jain temple – Jainism
  

A Basadi is a place of worship for followers of Jainism.

Judaism

A man prays at the Western Wall in Jerusalem

Sikh pilgrim at the Golden Temple of India

• 
  Synagogue – Judaism
  
  • Some synagogues, especially Reform synagogues, are called temples, but Orthodox and Conservative Judaism consider this inappropriate as they do not consider synagogues a replacement for the Temple in Jerusalem. Some Jewish congregations use the Yiddish term 'shul' to describe their place of worship or Beyt Knesset ( Hebrew בית כנסת ) meaning house of assembly.

Norse Paganism

• 
  hof – Norse Paganism
  

Shinto

Japanese people praying.

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  Jinja – Shinto

Sikhism

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  Gurdwara – Sikhism
  

Taoism

• 
  Daoguan – Taoism
  

Zoroastrianism

• 
  Fire temple - All Zoroastrian temples fall into the Fire temple category.
  
  • Atash Behram
  
  
  • 
    Agyari
    
    • Dadgah
  
  

Vietnamese ancestral worship

Cao Dai temple

• 
  Nhà thờ họ. Historically speaking Vietnamese people venerate their ancestors, as they somehow still exist among them. However, there is a large diversity of religions in Vietnam, Christianity, Buddhism and Cao Dai religion.

See also

• Altar


• Ibadat Khana


• Religious architecture


• Reliquary


• List of largest church buildings in the world


• List of largest mosques in the world


• Temple

References

Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Places of worship.

• James P. Wind, Places of worship: exploring their history, Rowman Altamira, 1997


• Vaughan Hart, Places of worship, Phaidon, 1999


• Eric Kang, The Place of Worship, Essence Publishing, 2003