A directory of every church on earth — and the work of building it.

The directory covers Christian churches of every tradition. Catholic: Roman Catholic basilicas, cathedrals, parish churches, and Eastern Catholic communities. Orthodox: Greek, Russian, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Georgian, Antiochian, and other autocephalous and autonomous churches. Anglican: Church of England, the Episcopal Church, and the wider Anglican Communion. Protestant: Lutheran, Reformed, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal, Evangelical, and Anabaptist traditions. Oriental Orthodox: Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopian, Eritrean, Syriac, and Indian Malankara. Restorationist and independent congregations are included where they self-identify as Christian and meet the inclusion criteria below.

Geographically, the directory aims for global coverage: cathedrals, parish churches, monastic communities, mission churches, rebuilt churches, and ruins of historical significance. We record the address, denomination, founding date, architectural notes, historical narrative, mass or service schedule where public, and photographs where licensing permits.

A church appears in the directory once it meets two conditions: it can be identified in at least one external source (OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikipedia, official diocesan listing, or a direct submission with supporting evidence), and the record has passed editorial review.

The directory is built in four stages: ingestion, reconciliation, editorial review, and update.

Ingestion. We pull church records from OpenStreetMap (every node, way, and relation taggedamenity=place_of_worshipwithreligion=christian) and from Wikidata (every entity that is an instance of a Christian church or one of its subclasses). Direct submissions arrive by email and are added to the queue.

Reconciliation. Each candidate record is matched against the existing index using name, geographic coordinates, address tokens, and external identifiers (OSM ID, Wikidata QID, GeoNames ID). When two sources describe the same church, their fields are merged: the most specific value wins, conflicts are flagged for editorial review, and the source provenance is preserved on every record.

Editorial review. A human reviewer examines the merged record: name spelling and transliteration, denominational classification, founding date where claimed, coordinates plotted on the map, and the historical narrative (which is paraphrased from Wikipedia where used, never copied). Records that are duplicates, demonstrably fictitious, or fail the inclusion criteria are rejected. Records with insufficient information are held in a draft state and revisited when more data arrives.

Update. Published records are revisited when an upstream source changes (we monitor OSM and Wikidata changesets for our index) or when a correction is submitted. The update is itself reviewed: silent overwriting from upstream is not permitted for records that have received editorial annotation.

Throughout, we lean on open data first and prefer machine-readable provenance over claimed authority. Where two reputable sources disagree, we record both, prefer the most recent verifiable evidence, and note the disagreement in the record.

We draw from four primary sources, each used under its own licence.

OpenStreetMap. OSM provides the geographic backbone of the directory: coordinates, addresses, and many of the building footprints. OSM data is published under the Open Database Licence (ODbL). We attribute OpenStreetMap on every church record that uses OSM-derived geometry or tags.

Wikidata. Wikidata supplies structured facts — founding dates, architects, denominations, parent dioceses, listed-building status — released into the public domain under CC0. We use Wikidata QIDs as durable identifiers and link back to the source entity.

Wikipedia. Wikipedia is the most common source of historical narrative. Wikipedia text is licensed CC BY-SA. We do not republish Wikipedia text verbatim; we paraphrase the underlying facts in our own editorial voice, preserving accuracy while writing a single consistent register across the directory. Where a specific claim comes from a Wikipedia article, we link to that article.

Direct submissions. Parish administrators, diocesan offices, historians, and photographers submit records and corrections by email. Submitters retain rights to original content (photographs, text); we ask for a non-exclusive licence to publish in the directory.

For details on individual claims, every record links to its sources.

The directory treats every Christian tradition on equal terms. The denomination of a church is recorded as a fact, not a judgment. Where a building has changed hands between traditions — for example, a former Catholic parish reorganised as a Greek Orthodox church — we record the current use and the history, both.

Inclusion is generous. We list active parishes, historical churches no longer in active use, monastic communities open to visitors, and ruins of architectural or historical significance. We list churches of contested status (sites disputed between communities, or churches in regions of political tension) by their current physical condition and the most widely recognised name, with the dispute noted in the historical record.

Some categories sit at the edge of the directory's scope. House churches and home congregations are listed when they self-publish and meet the verifiability criteria. Chapels inside larger institutions (schools, hospitals, palaces) are listed when they have a public function or significant architectural importance. Christian groups that other Christian denominations widely classify as non-Christian are excluded by default; we record the boundary cases on the inclusion-criteria page.

Names use the form most widely recognised in English, with native-language and Romanised variants captured as alternate names.

The directory will contain errors. Names will be transliterated inconsistently. Dates will be off. A church will have moved or merged or closed and we will not yet have caught it. When you find a mistake, write to hello@allthechurches.com with the church and the correction. We reply.

Corrections from the church itself — a parish priest, an administrator, a diocese — take priority and are usually applied within a week. Corrections from researchers and contributors with supporting evidence are reviewed and applied with a citation. Anonymous corrections without sources are read but not actioned until the claim can be verified.

Takedown requests are honoured. A church that asks to be removed from the directory is removed promptly. Sensitive cases — a community in a region where being publicly identified as a church is dangerous — are handled privately at the request of the community.

Sanctuaries is a small team. We come to this work as researchers, builders, and travellers — people who have spent time in cathedrals, in village churches, and in the ruins of old monasteries, and who think the world is better with a careful record of these places.

Every record in the directory is reviewed by a human. Every editorial choice — what to include, how to write a name, when to defer a record back to draft — is made by someone whose name appears on this page.

If you would like to contribute as a reviewer, photographer, or regional editor, write to us. We are slowly growing the team along regional lines: people with deep local knowledge of the churches in one country or one tradition are the best collaborators we have.

The directory grows when people who care about a church take the time to add it.

For parishes and diocesan offices. Send your parish's name, address, denomination, contact information, mass or service schedule, and any photographs you have rights to publish. We will create the record with you and route subsequent edits back to you.

For photographers. We are always looking for high-quality photographs of churches, exterior and interior. Photographs must be your own work, with a licence that permits republishing on Sanctuaries with a credit. We pay nothing for photographs, but we credit prominently and we link back to your portfolio.

For researchers and historians. Corrections, supporting sources, historical narratives, and additions to the inclusion criteria are all welcome. If you maintain a regional or denominational dataset that could be reconciled with Sanctuaries, write to us — we are open to data partnerships.

Submissions for any of the above go to hello@allthechurches.com, or use the form on the contact page. We read every message.

Sanctuaries is a new project and a small team. We do not yet maintain a press list, but we are happy to talk to journalists, researchers, and editors writing about the world's churches, sacred architecture, denominational geography, or the underlying open-data sources.

For press enquiries, write to hello@allthechurches.com with a brief description of the piece and a deadline.

How to cite Sanctuaries. Cite the canonical URL of the specific church record you reference. For the directory as a whole, cite this About page. A short suggested form:

Sanctuaries. (2026). Church name. Retrieved from https://allthechurches.com/churches/…

We maintain stable URLs and resolve renamed slugs by redirect. Permalink citations are preferred over screenshots and over generic “the Sanctuaries website” attributions.

Sanctuaries is built and maintained by Marios, working independently. The project is sustained by donated time. It is free to use and free of advertising; we sell nothing, and we do not place sponsored content in the directory.

We may, in the future, accept donations, grants from cultural-heritage foundations, or institutional partnerships. If we do, the source of funding will be listed on this page and the editorial policy that excludes paid placement will remain.

The directory has no commercial partners and is not affiliated with any denomination, diocese, publisher, or technology company. This independence is, in our view, the precondition for a directory that the broader public can trust — and it is the reason the project began as a personal commitment rather than as a business.

Write to hello@allthechurches.com for corrections, submissions, partnerships, or press. We read every message, and we reply.

For shorter notes use the form on the contact page. For longer correspondence — adding a regional dataset, contributing photographs, proposing a research collaboration — email is the better channel. We typically respond within a few working days.