▲A 400-year old mummified arm dangles from the ceiling of this church in Prague, reminding people what happens to thieves.

▲This New Mexico church is made of adobe, and re-mudded every year by the Native American community. It's unusual image caught the eye of photographer Ansel Adams and painter Georgia O'Keeffe!

▲In a unique opal mining town called Coober Pedy, where there’s an entire underground community of homes, motels, and even a pub, there’s also an underground Serbian Orthodox Church.

▲Few churches are as spooky as this church in Kutná Hora, where up to 70,000 people's bones are arranged in artistic decor, including a chandelier!

▲Inside the cathedral might even be better, with four bells, a reflecting pool, and sculptures of angels that hang from a stained-glass ceiling.

▲Located in the small town of Ipiales, this immense and gorgeous church is wedged into a narrow canyon beside a river.

▲In the hyper-trendy Harajuku district you’ll find a sleek, modern Protestant church whose design was based on the lucky number seven.

▲No matter what you make of this radically original cathedral in Brazil’s capital, it's hard to deny Oscar Niemeyer is an exceptionally talented architect.

▲Better known as the Rock Church, this Helsinki structure is a mix of ancient and modern, with walls made from natural stone formations and a roof made of copper.

▲At the right time of day, the sunlight hits the fan-like roof's multicolored glass and the church is swathed in a brilliant rainbow effect.

▲This cathedral in Paraná is the tallest church in South America, at a height of 124 m (407 ft). With 598 steps inside, it serves its purpose in bringing people closer to God.

▲The Gaudi-designed church in Barcelona is ambitious to say the least, with a rainbow interior and the entire bible depicted on one face—and it's not finished! The plan is for it to be completed on the centenary of Gaudi's death in 2026.

▲Reykjavik hosts the sixth-tallest structure in the entire country, which was designed to resemble the basalt lava that flows in Iceland.

▲Erected in 962 AD, this church sits on a volcanic plug! It's just a quick 268 steps, carved into the rock itself, to say your prayers...

▲The rock churches of Lalibela are the largest monolithic temples in the world. There are 11 in total, and all of them are underground.

▲The first of its kind, this blow-up church was erected in 2003 in Sandown. It stands 47 ft (14.3 m) tall, and comes with an inflatable organ, candles, and stained glass windows. The church can hold up to 60 people, and has actually held services!

▲Christian monks built a chapel on a 130-foot rock cliff, and it’s been home to a sole monk since the ‘90s. The only way up is a metal ladder, though it's recently been closed to the public.

▲Though it’s melted now, the sub-zero church in Mitterfirmiansreut was more than 65 ft (20 m) in length, consisted of 49,000 cubic feet of snow, and was cleverly dubbed "God’s igloo."

▲Built on the grounds of the former border strip in Berlin, this church sits on top of the ruins of the original Church of Reconciliation and serves as both a place of worship and a part of the Berlin Wall Memorial.

▲Miners, who worked a life-threatening job, needed religion underground, so they carved chapels directly out of the rock salt, and now you can even get married down there!

▲Sitting on the bank of the Canal du Blavet in Brittany, this stone chapel was built into the base of a rock cliff.

▲This chapel, located in Allouville-Bellefosse in northern France, is inside an oak tree that is hundreds of years old. It became a place of worship after a bolt of lightning burned its insides clear in the 17th century.

▲Not what you might expect to see in Rome, this distinctive modern church is more than just unique looking—its walls are made from a special cement that contains titanium dioxide, so it destroys air pollution!

▲This living, breathing cathedral in the Alps of northern Italy is still growing! The architect planted hundreds of fir poles, as well as chestnut and hazel branches, in such a way to create the walls and soon the arched ceiling of a cathedral.

▲Legend says that Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible) had the architect blinded after he created this magical structure in Moscow, to prevent him from building a more magnificent building for anyone else.

▲Designed by Jon Haraldsson, this futuristic church in Stykkisholmur was consecrated in 1990 and makes a drastic impact on the Icelandic landscape around it.

▲What might otherwise be overlooked as an antiquated, though unique, forgotten building in Mykonos is actually one of the most famous architectural structures in Greece.

▲This metropolitan church was built between 1964 and 1979, and has a standing-room capacity of 20,000 people.

▲This tourist attraction serves as a real cathedral and is made of wood, steel, and most importantly, cardboard tubes.

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Gottfried Böhm's Church of the Pilgrimage in Neviges is one of the most revered religious buildings of the Brutalist period of architecture.

▲The people who lived in the Cappadocia villages carved houses, churches, and monasteries into the soft rock, etching their faith into the landscape for centuries to come.

▲A rare example of expressionist church architecture can be found at the impressive Grundtvigs Kirke in Copenhagen.

▲This gorgeous clear church in Tainan opened in October 2014, and, lucky for lovers, it offers wedding ceremony services!

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Doorkijkkerk is the name of this church that is both existent and non-existent, built to address the dichotomy between the omnipresence of churches and their seemingly increasing irrelevance.

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Known locally as Ronchamp, many people compare the roof of this building to Elvis Presley's hair.

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This special chapel in Vermont has dog-sized doors, carved wooden dogs that line the pews, and dog-themed stained glass windows. The sign reads, “Welcome all creeds, all breeds. No dogmas allowed.”

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The US Air Force Academy in Colorado
has a chapel that modeled its shape from an airplane pointing upwards to create something classic, but wholly its own.

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This small, peaceful, non-denominational chapel in Eureka Springs, Arizona, breathes life into all religions with this bright, forested structure.

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Though this Munich church looks more like a tech store, it's a functioning church that replaced the one that burned down in a fire in the '90s.

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This modern church in Sedona, Arizona, juts out from between two mounds, but it's especially unusual because people believe it is located on an energy vortex where the boundaries between worlds are thin.

▲Buildings of worship have been central elements of many communities for hundreds of years, but, somewhere along the way, architects grew tired of their predictable design. Check out this gallery to see the stunning, profound, hilarious, and confounding physical manifestations of faith around the world.

The world's quirkiest churches

Human bones for decor, inflatable walls, and more

18/03/25 por StarsInsider

TRAVEL Architecture

Buildings of worship have been central elements of many communities for hundreds of years, but, somewhere along the way, architects grew tired of their predictable design. Check out this gallery to see the stunning, profound, hilarious, and confounding physical manifestations of faith around the world.