117 Best Sights in USA

Modeled after the cathedral in Vienna, Austria, this Gothic Revival building has stained-glass windows from Bavaria and 230-foot-tall twin spires that are visible from most places in the city. Construction began in 1908 and was completed six years later. Note the white-marble altars, statues of Carrara marble, and gold leaf decorating the sanctuary. Free guided tours are given between 1 and 3 pm Tuesday–Thursday in the summer (Memorial Day–Labor Day). Call for guided tours for 10 or more during other months of the year.

This Dutch Romanesque structure with Byzantine touches was completed in 1916. In the cemetery behind the church, are aboveground tombs that date back to 1820; interred here are town founder Jean Mouton, Civil War General Alfred Mouton, General Alfred Gardiner, and Cidalese Arceneaux. Next to the cathedral is a nearly 500-year-old St. John Oak, one of the charter members of the silent but leafy Louisiana Live Oak Society. A booklet for self-guided tours are available when the cathedral is open, while those wanting a docent-guided tour should call to reserve a space.

This architectural masterpiece, considered one of America's most important and beautiful Gothic cathedrals, was constructed in the 1920s with sandstone from Tacoma and Boise and limestone from Indiana. The cathedral's renowned 49-bell carillon has attracted international guest musicians.

This enormous 1875 Gothic cathedral dominates the corner of Washington and Union Park streets. The main church of the Archdiocese of Boston and therefore the seat of Cardinal Seán Patrick O'Malley, Holy Cross is also New England's largest Catholic church. It's also home to an 1875 Hook & Hastings pipe organ, the largest instrument ever built by that company.

Although the Salt Lake Temple just to the west is Salt Lake's most prominent religious landmark, this 1909 cathedral stands high above the city's north side and is a stunning house of worship in its own right. The exterior sports gargoyles, and its Gothic interior showcases bright frescoes, intricate wood carvings, and a 4,066-pipe organ. The highly regarded Madeleine children's choir gives concerts regularly (especially during the Christmas season).

This small log Catholic chapel, built in 1937, sits in the pine forest with a view of Jackson Lake. It's open only for services in the summer, but you can enjoy the view anytime, and the grounds are nice for a picnic.

This tiny chapel built in 1925 on land donated by Maud Noble is still a functioning Episcopal church. Couples come here to exchange vows with the Tetons as a backdrop, and tourists snap photos of the small church with its awe-inspiring view.

The Anglicans of the Church of England built a wooden church on this site in 1697. When they outgrew it, they erected a new church, the most sumptuous in the colonies, probably designed by Dr. John Kearsley and modeled on the work of famed English architect Sir Christopher Wren. The symmetrical, classical facade with arched windows, completed in 1754, is a fine example of Georgian architecture; the church is one of the city's treasures. The congregation included 15 signers of the Declaration of Independence. The bells and the soaring 196-foot steeple, the tallest in the colonies, were financed by lotteries run by Benjamin Franklin. Brass plaques mark the pews of George and Martha Washington, John and Abigail Adams, Betsy Ross, and others. Two blocks west of the church is Christ Church Burial Ground. Guided tours are available throughout the day.

George Washington was a parishoner in this Episcopal church, which remains in nearly original condition. (Washington paid quite a lot of money for pew 5—today's pews 59 and 60). Completed in 1773, it's a fine example of an English Georgian country-style church with its Palladian chancel window, interior balcony, and English wrought-brass-and-crystal chandelier. Docents give tours during visiting hours, during which visitors are invited to sit in Washington's box pew.

This modest yet beautiful gray clapboard structure was designed in 1761 by Peter Harrison, the first architect of note in the colonies (he designed King's Chapel). During the Revolution, members of its mostly Tory congregation fled for their lives. The organ was melted down for bullets and the building was used as a barracks during the Siege of Boston. (Step into the vestibule to look for the bullet hole left during the skirmish.) Today, the organ facade takes inspiration from the original 1762 gallery organ.

Martha Washington requested that the church reopen for services on New Year's Eve in 1775. The church's historical significance extends to the 20th century: Teddy Roosevelt was a Sunday-school teacher here (and famously fired because he remained Dutch Reformed rather than becoming an Episcopalian), and Martin Luther King Jr. spoke from the pulpit to announce his opposition to the Vietnam War.

This was the first church—then Anglican—established in the Georgia colony in 1733. It is often called the "Mother Church of Georgia." George Washington attended services here when he visited the city in 1791 (although in the building prior to the current 1838 structure), as did Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts. From its location on Johnson Square, an 1819 Revere & Son bell still chimes today in the imposing white-columned steeple.

Surrounded by moss-draped live oaks, dogwoods, and azaleas, this picturesque white-frame, Gothic-style church was built by shipwrights and consecrated in 1884 following an earlier structure's desecration by Union troops. The interior has beautiful stained-glass windows and several handmade pews. The congregation itself dates back to 1808 and is the second oldest Episcopal Church in the diocese of Georgia. In the adjacent cemetery grounds, you'll find the final resting place for Golden Isles historical fiction writer Eugenia Price.

The Church of San Geronimo, or St. Jerome (the patron saint of Taos Pueblo), was completed in 1850 and is the fourth church to stand at Taos Pueblo. The original church, built in 1627, was destroyed in 1640 by the Pueblo people in protest of Spanish attempts to missionize them. After this, the Taos people left their village and did not return until 1660, when they were persuaded by Governor Lopez de Mendizibal to come back. The second church was then built, but it was destroyed in 1680 during the Pueblo Revolt when Pueblo Natives throughout the region united in a successful effort to force the Spanish to leave the area. A third church was begun by Spanish Franciscans after they returned to Taos twelve years later. This church, finished by 1726, stood until 1847. At that point, during the Taos Rebellion (aka Taos Revolt), U.S. soldiers attacked what they believed were the men who had killed Governor Bent and other Americans. In reality, most of these men had fled to the mountains and the people inside the church were mainly women and children. The ruins of this third church can be seen today, and have become a cemetery site to the left of the Pueblo’s public entrance. The fourth church that stands today on the Pueblo’s plaza was built in 1850. With its smooth symmetry, stepped portal, and twin bell towers, the church is a popular subject for photographers and artists.

This 1867 Gothic Revival church, a National Historic Landmark at the corner of Newbury and Berkeley streets, has one of the largest collections of liturgical windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany in the country. It's crowned by a 236-foot-tall steeple—the tallest in Boston—that Oliver Wendell Holmes called "absolutely perfect." Inside, a 14-foot-high Tiffany lantern hangs from a breathtaking 100-foot ceiling. The church is now Presbyterian and United Church of Christ.

Standing together along the highway are seven houses of worship with primarily Native Hawaiian congregations. Notice the unadorned, boxlike architecture so similar to missionary homes.

The first church building erected on this site in the 1680s gave bustling Meeting Street its name. The present-day Romanesque structure, dating from 1890, is configured on a Greek-cross plan and has a breathtaking vaulted ceiling. While the sanctuary is not open to visitors except during Sunday morning service, you are welcome to explore the graveyard, which is the oldest English burial ground in the city, with records dating back to 1695.

Built in 1940 and designed by legendary Santa Fe architect John Gaw Meem to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado's exploration of the Southwest, this church is the largest Spanish adobe structure in the United States and is considered by some to be the finest example of Pueblo-style architecture anywhere. The church was constructed in the old-fashioned way by parishioners, who mixed the more than 200,000 mud-and-straw adobe bricks and hauled them into place. The 225-ton white stone reredos (altar screen) is magnificent.

Built in 1860, this Back Bay Gothic Episcopal church is popular among classical music lovers—every Sunday morning at 10, from September to May, as part of the liturgy, a Bach cantata, and music by Schütz, Mendelssohn, and others, including music written by living composers, is performed; guest conductors have included Christopher Hogwood and Seiji Ozawa. From May to September, the Chapel Choir, comprised of both professional and volunteer singers, performs.

 Enslaved people constructed this church at night by lamplight after having worked the plantations during the day, finishing it in 1859. It is one of the first organized black Baptist churches on the continent, constituted in 1777. The basement floor still shows signs of its time as a stop on the Underground Railroad. Holes drilled in the floor are designed in a prayer symbol known as an "African cosmogram," and are rumored to actually have been air holes for slaves hiding underneath, waiting to be transported to the Savannah River for their trip to freedom. It was also an important meeting place during the civil rights era.

This small, one-room church on the north end of Cumberland Island was rebuilt in 1937 to replace a cruder 1893 structure used by former slaves from the High Point–Half Moon Bluff community. Constructed of whitewashed logs, it's simply adorned with a cross made of sticks tied together with string and 11 handmade pews seating 40 people. John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette were married here on September 21, 1996. The Kennedy–Bessette wedding party stayed at the Greyfield Inn, built on the south end of the island in 1900 by the Carnegie family.

Founded in 1886, First African Methodist Episcopal is the state's oldest church founded by African Americans. The community's nexus has operated out of this historic building since 1912. FAME's gospel choirs are among the city's best, and discussions with intellectuals, authors, artists, and the community are regularly scheduled.

This 1872 structure, at the corner of Clarendon Street and Commonwealth Avenue, was architect Henry Hobson Richardson's first foray into Romanesque Revival. It was originally erected for the Brattle Square Unitarian Society, but Richardson ran over budget and the church went bankrupt and dissolved. In 1882, the building was bought by the Baptists. The figures on each side of its 176-foot soaring tower were sculpted by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the sculptor who designed the Statue of Liberty. The friezes represent four points at which God enters an individual's life: baptism, communion, marriage, and death. The tower is undergoing a huge restoration project to help it weather the years to come. Call ahead on a weekday and you may be given an informal tour.

This historic house of worship was built in 1775 for a congregation originally established in 1638 by Roger Williams and his fellow Puritan dissenters. The writer H. P. Lovecraft attended Sunday school here briefly as a child. Architecture and design buffs will appreciate the landmark 185-foot steeple, erected in just 3½ days, as well as the auditorium's large crystal chandelier from Ireland, installed in 1792. Guided tours are available on Tuesdays and Thursdays from noon to 1:30 pm and Sundays at the conclusion of worship services. Smartphone-enabled self-guided tours are also an option and are available in multiple languages.

The world headquarters and mother church of the Christian Science faith mixes the traditional with the modern—marrying Bernini to Le Corbusier by combining an old-world basilica with a sleek office complex designed by I. M. Pei & Partners and Araldo Cossutta, Associated Architects. Mary Baker Eddy's original granite First Church of Christ, Scientist (1894) has since been enveloped by a domed Renaissance Revival basilica, added to the site in 1906, and both church buildings are now surrounded by the offices of the Christian Science Publishing Society, where the Christian Science Monitor is produced, and by Cossutta's complex of church-administration structures completed in 1973. You can hear all 13,000-plus pipes of the church's famed Aeolian-Skinner organ during Sunday services.

The outer reflection pool, small fountains, and surrounding area (together with the church and the Mary Baker Eddy Library, the area is known as the Christian Science Plaza) received a major face-lift recently to include more walkways and sitting areas. Church tours are held Friday and Saturday at 11 am, 1 pm, and 3 pm, and on Sunday at 1 pm and 3 pm.

Built in 1773, just before the American Revolution, this stunning church is a marvel. The 1804 Asher Benjamin–style steeple stands proudly atop the village, and the sounds of the original Paul Revere bell can be heard for miles.

A welcome visual and physical oasis amid the high-rise hubbub of North Michigan Avenue, this Gothic Revival house of worship is the oldest building on North Michigan Avenue apart from the Old Water Tower complex (which survived the Chicago Fire of 1871). Designed by Ralph Adams Cram, the church drew many of its congregants from the city's elite but now reflects the city's diversity. Local architect Howard Van Doren Shaw devised the cloister and companion buildings.

In July and August, free concerts are staged every Friday at 12:10 beside the courtyard fountain off Michigan Avenue; other months they're performed in the sanctuary.

The circa-1845 Gothic-style church is home to the nation's only practicing Huguenot congregation. English-language services are held Sunday at 10:30, with a tour given to any visitors immediately afterward.

For a rockin' gospel concert and an inclusive, feel-good vibe, head to Glide, where engaging pastors lead a hand-clapping, shout-it-out, get-on-your-feet Sunday "celebration." The radically inclusive crowd—gay and straight, all colors of the rainbow, religious and not—is large and enthusiastic. You might recognize the church from the Will Smith film The Pursuit of Happiness.

One of the few remaining relics from the Swedes who settled in Pennsylvania before William Penn, Gloria Dei, also known as Old Swedes' Church, has been active since 1700. It’s the oldest church in Pennsylvania and second oldest in the entire country. Models of the ships that transported the first Swedish settlers hang from the ceiling in the center of the church; the baptismal font dates all the way back to 1731, while religious carvings on display are even older. Grouped around the house of worship are the parish hall, the sexton’s house, the rectory, and the church offices. Sitting in the center of a graveyard, Old Swedes' is calming in its tranquility.

One of three original churches still standing in the park, Good Spring Church is a remnant of the Cade community. The adjacent cemetery contains stones with names of the families that lived here. More information about the Cade community is available at an outdoor exhibit at Maple Springs Group Campground nearby on Maple Springs Loop Road.