Holy grail: Did you mean...?

Simon Reeve begins in Istanbul, Turkey, a busy medieval staging post for pilgrims to the Holy Land. Before falling to the Ottoman Empire, it was the centre of Roman Christianity under Emperor Constantine. His mother Helena, arguably the first...

Part of Votive Panel of Jan Očko of Vlašim depicting Charles IV. Tempera on limewood, before 1371. National Museum, Prague.

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) was a German composer of Romantic music most famous for his epic operas like The Ring, Tannhäuser, and Tristan and Isolde. Wagner was concerned throughout his career with the theme of redemption through love and...

The Ark of the Covenant refers to the box-like container that held the tablets of the Law received by Moses on Mount Sinai. Tradition claimed that it contained two stone tablets, carved by God, listing the first ten commandments given to...

The Altarpiece of the Holy Blood in the church of Saint Jacob, Rothenburg, Germany. Made of glazed limewood by Tilman Riemenschneider (c. 1460-1531), it was completed by 1505. It shows the Last Supper in the central panel while the left...

The site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is identified as the place both of the crucifixion and the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. Despite the mutilations of the centuries, the Holy Sepulchre remains a fascinating complex of...

Image of the Maya Devi Temple and Holy Pond in Lumbini, the birthplace of the Buddha. The area of the temple covers the exact spot where Siddhartha Gautama was born, which is indicated by the marker stone. The Holy Pond is where, according...

Made of silk fabric, gold and silver thread, gold and silk twine, as well as colored silks, this holy shroud or "epitaphios" comes from the Sachkhere, which is located in western Georgia, and dates from the 14th century CE. A donor-renovator's...

A map in German of central Europe during the time of the Hohenstaufen Emperors, primarily showing the territories of the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Sicily. The map is a vectorised version of this map from Professor G. Droysens...

The Byzantine Church of the Holy Apostles, Athens. Built c. 1000, it is typical of the Byzantine church model copied everywhere across the Byzantine Empire.