Visit the Solovetsky Monastery

A chapel decorated with the bones of 40,000 people — chandelier included — beside the Gothic St Barbara’s Cathedral.

Onion domes over meadows: five monasteries and thirty churches in a town with no buildings taller than two storeys.

Island of wooden churches, stilt houses and its own mythology.

The Jordan riverbank where John baptised Jesus, with Byzantine churches and pilgrims wading in white robes.

The largest surviving Romanesque church in Europe, built for pilgrims on the road to Santiago and topped by a five-tier octagonal bell tower.

Peter the Great’s "Russian Versailles" with its cascade of gilded fountains.

Baroque Benedictine abbey on a rock above the Danube, with a gilded library of 100,000 books and frescoed marble hall.

Granite stelae up to 33 metres tall marking the tombs of the Aksumite kings, near the chapel said to hold the Ark of the Covenant.