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Ritual practices have been part of human life for almost as long as we can trace archaeological remains. The supernatural and inexplicable attract, excite, and worry people, with religion and its associated rituals being one of the main ways through which humans try to make sense of the world, create structure, and seek support. In archaeology, the study of religion and its material remains has been a focus since the very beginnings of the discipline, from prehistoric monuments such as Stonehenge to Roman temples and Christian churches, to name just some examples. Certain sites have been perceived by humans as particularly concentrating sacredness, often becoming the focus of pilgrimages understood in the broadest sense, undertaken over long distances to allow people to connect with the divine. For instance, the work by Georgia Petridou has highlighted aspects of pilgrimage in the context of healing cults in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean, and the journal Religion in the Roman Empire also holds numerous contributions focusing on such topics.
Throughout history, pilgrimage to sacred locations has also been an important driver of urban development, sometimes even being at the core of the origins of a city. For example, Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain developed since the 9th century AD as the result of the peregrination to the supposed tomb of the Apostle St James the Great. During the medieval period, several pilgrimage routes flourished across Europe with Santiago as their final destination, the main one being the so-called ‘French Way’ crossing the Pyrenees. The Camino de Santiago (Way of St James) was relevant not only for the prosperity of Santiago itself, but also for many other urban centres along the way that benefited from the constant flux of pilgrims. Pilgrimage to Santiago continues up to the present day (with over half a million visitors recorded in 2025), although in addition to the spiritual component, nowadays many people take the route for other reasons such as tourism and sport – or frequently a combination of them.
Religious experience and economic growth
Similar phenomena of religious pilgrimage took place in various areas across Europe during the medieval period and beyond, as well as in the Islamic world and in other parts of the globe. While not all of them led to urban foundations, the prosperity or even the origins of numerous cities are closely related to peregrinations. The most tangible material expression was the building of religious structures such as temples and shrines – sometimes on a truly monumental scale, such as St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican or the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa. Moreover, once people gathered at certain locations associated activities usually thrived, such as the construction of houses to host the pilgrims, holding of markets and fairs, and development of craft production. These activities led to urban growth and an economy that was, to a greater or lesser extent, dependent on keeping the pilgrimage sites flourishing through maintaining their religious and cultic importance.
Pilgrimages could take place at different scales, from global (such as to Rome and Mecca) to regional. Among the manifold examples of smaller-scale pilgrimages were the peregrinations to the tombs of St Elizabeth in Marburg and St Vitalis in Esslingen, which significantly contributed to the growth of both urban centres in medieval Germany. Archaeology has made important advances in our understanding of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, not only by studying the church buildings themselves, but also by shedding light on aspects such as the infrastructure developed to support the pilgrims and the life experiences of individual participants, for example through the study of pilgrim burials, as shown by Peter Yeoman in his 2018 chapter ‘An archaeology of pilgrimage’.
In the Mediterranean world, we also find numerous pilgrimage sites relating to Greco-Roman and wider regional cults of various kinds, including the so-called healing sanctuaries, where people would flock to pray, offer votives, and stay over in the hope of being relieved of their ailments. Numerous sanctuaries of Asclepius, with their healing cult installations, are good examples of such classical pilgrimage sites. Around these sanctuaries a wide range of activities developed, and while these places did not always lie close to urban sites, they in themselves functioned like small towns in some respects. They were able to cater for large numbers of people for differing periods of time, including by provisioning them with food, producing cultic paraphernalia (such as votive objects made solely to be bought either on the way to the site or at the sanctuary), and having cultic personnel who could guide visitors through ritual actions and advise them on how best to achieve healing.
Since 2012, research undertaken first within the ‘Lived Ancient Religion’ project, based at the University of Erfurt in Germany and later continued through other initiatives, including the ‘Religion and Urbanity’ project, has addressed through subprojects the study of pilgrimage as a lived experience from antiquity to the medieval period. In this regard, the University of Erfurt has in its own way become a pilgrimage site for scholars. It is an apt development, perhaps, for a city that is also the so-called spiritual home of Martin Luther, the instigator of the Reformation. Nowadays, when visiting the city, one walks the routes of Luther on a kind of modern pilgrimage tour, although led by tourist guides rather than monks.
The largest pilgrimage cities can attract several million people. An outstanding case is Varanasi in India, the sacred city by the Ganges River that has been a major pilgrimage destination in Hindu religion from antiquity to the present. In addition to its numerous temples, the city is particularly famous for its ghats, steps that allow pilgrims access to the water of the sacred river to perform activities such as ritual baths and the scattering of the ashes of cremated individuals. These aspects remind us of all the ritual practices associated with pilgrimages that usually leave no archaeologically identifiable traces, but that have been a fundamental part of religious life across the globe. Bridging the gap between tangible evidence and intangible practices is not always easy, but archaeologists have started to propose ways forward, as outlined by Christopher Davis and Robin Coningham in their 2018 article ‘Pilgrimage and procession’.
Some pilgrimage cities can be sacred for more than one religion. While this can sometimes lead to processes of exchange, syncretism, and hybridity, it also means that they might become contested. A well-known example of this is Jerusalem, which is simultaneously sacred for three of the world’s major religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Between the 11th and the 13th centuries, several Crusades were launched by Christian powers to capture the Holy City from the Muslims. These military campaigns have left abundant archaeological traces across the Levantine region, particularly in the form of Crusader castles such as Krak des Chevaliers in Syria. In Jerusalem itself, millennia of religious devotion have shaped the city’s architectural landscape with iconic monuments such as the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Dome of the Rock.
Sacred ways
Pilgrimage can spur or hinder urban growth; it can even be a pain to the people who in fact live in the cities, while also representing an important source of income – just think of the 2025 Jubilee Year in Rome, which came to a close not long ago and increased visitor numbers exorbitantly, therefore also leading to soaring prices in the city. But, beyond purely practical considerations, there is something truly extraordinary about places that have been the scene of repeated pilgrimage and devotion for centuries or even millennia. What we can observe in them is a spiritual chain that links generations of pilgrims, and while the specific rituals and beliefs can take multiple forms, the deeper meaning of connecting with the sacred through travelling to it actually constitutes a common denominator that connects humans across religions.
Manuel Fernández-Götz is Professor of Later European Prehistory at the University of Oxford. His main areas of research are the archaeology of identities, early urbanism, and conflict archaeology. Together with Rubina, since 2026 he is the main editor of the Journal of Urban Archaeology.
Rubina Raja is Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art at Aarhus University. She also heads the ‘Locally Crafted Empires' Semper Ardens Advanced Grant project and the ‘Lost Cities' Gerda Henkel Foundation project on urban excavation legacy data. She is the founder and main editor of the Journal of Urban Archaeology.
A new podcast series, Urban Opinion, is inspired by the regular columns written by Rubina Raja and Søren M Sindbæk in CWA since 2022. Listen to the series at https://linktr.ee/UrbanOpinion_EnglishEdition.
