At the age of 20, fed up with the life at court, Ivan Rilski moved into a cave in a remote part of Bulgaria to do penance. His reputation for sanctity attracted many disciples, who built a hermitage a short distance southeast of the present monastery. Here, the saint’s tomb can still be seen, together with his cell and a chapel dedicated to St. Luke. (more…)

Bernard Maybeck viewed the architectural canon as a style smorgasbord. Gothic, Romanesque, Asian, Arts and Crafts, Classicism – all were there to be sampled, interpreted, and reintroduce as California Craftsman. His belief in pure materials – untreated redwood shingles, exposed reinforced concrete, raw timber trellises – was balanced by unbridled curiosity for new materials, colours, and patterns combined in untested ways. (more…)

Victor Hugo called it ‘a majestic pyramid standing on a huge rock, shaped and carved by the Middle Ages’. Pre-Christian legends held that it was the island where the souls of the dead congregated. But for Aubert, Bishop of nearby Avranches in the 8th century, the rocky crag off France’s northern coast was a place to meditate. (more…)

Known locally as Burt Chapel, St. Aengus’s Church stands at the head of Lough Swilly, 10 kilometres west of Derry. The church dramatically echoes the Grianan of Aileanc, a Bronze-Age hilltop fort that dominates the surrounding countryside, and it is similarly circular in plan. A tent-like roof rising to a conical spire, both clad in copper, tops two concentric circles faced in rough-hewn stone. A split in the two circles forms the entrance; the space inside houses confessional boxes and a sacristy. (more…)

Rudolf Steiner was the founder of Anthroposophy, which, aside from being hard to say, was a part educational and part religious movement aimed at ‘developing the faculty of cognition and the realization of spiritual reality’. The movement led eventually to the construction of an increasing number of highly expressive and idiosyncratic schools across Europe, rated highly for their notably humane methods of education. (more…)

The Pilgrimage Church is a building type that was pursued with remarkable vigour in Catholic countries during the 20th century. The pilgrim movement has given us such gems as Le Corbusier’s peerless chapel at Ronchamp. Also in the top league is this astonishing church in Neviges, Germany, which rises above a new settlement for pilgrims designed by Gottfried Bohm. (more…)