Spot the sanctuary by its selfie—no tour bus required.
By Richie.Zh01
40 Questions
L1 Difficulty
1 × 40 Points
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About This Quiz
Think every big stone church looks the same? Hold my beer—and my candle.
We start with fridge-magnet cathedrals, then wander off-road to timber chapels and neon mega-sanctuaries that probably sell lattes after vespers. By Part 3 the bell towers blur, gargoyles grin, and you’re screaming “Bavaria or Bogotá?!” at your screen.
Pick wrong and you’re wandering the nave like a tourist hunting the bathroom. Get them right and you’ve teleported the globe in your slippers—choir robe optional, off-key anthem included.
Click start and turn those vacation dreams into bragging rights.
[A] Holy Trinity Cathedral | Tbilisi's golden dome crowns Georgia's religious revival, built with donations from billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili who apparently bought his way into heaven's VIP section.
2/40
2. Winchester Cathedral
[B] Winchester Cathedral | Jane Austen lies here beneath Gothic vaults stretching 169 meters, making this Europe's longest cathedral where Pride meets Perpendicular architecture.
3/40
3. Paris
[C] Paris | Sacré-Cœur's white travertine self-cleans in rain while judging Montmartre's sins from its hilltop perch above cabarets and tourist traps.
4/40
4. Almudena Cathedral
[A] Almudena Cathedral | Madrid waited 400 years for its cathedral, finally finishing in 1993 when Pope John Paul II consecrated this neo-Gothic latecomer facing the palace.
5/40
5. Dresden Cathedral
[D] Dresden Cathedral | Rebuilt from World War II rubble using original stones marked like a giant jigsaw puzzle, this Baroque phoenix rose from 15,000 tons of debris.
6/40
6. Turku Cathedral
[D] Turku Cathedral | Finland's mother church survived the Great Fire of 1827 while the rest of Turku burned, apparently having better insurance with the Almighty.
7/40
7. Basilica Cathedral of Arequipa
[B] Basilica Cathedral of Arequipa | Peru's volcanic sillar stone cathedral survived 400 years of earthquakes by basically learning to dance with tectonic plates.
8/40
8. Santiago Metropolitan Cathedral
[C] Santiago Metropolitan Cathedral | Chile's neoclassical matriarch guards the tomb of first cardinal while street performers juggle fire outside, mixing sacred and circus.
9/40
9. Lisieux
[D] Lisieux | St. Thérèse's basilica went full Byzantine in Normandy, honoring the "Little Flower" with mosaics covering 5,000 square meters of spiritual bling.
10/40
10. Basilica de San Martin de Tours (Taal)
[C] Basilica de San Martin de Tours (Taal) | Asia's largest Catholic church fits 8,000 Filipinos under baroque arches that survived Taal Volcano's tantrums through pure architectural stubbornness.
11/40
11. Ely Cathedral, Cambridgeshire
[B] Ely Cathedral, Cambridgeshire | Its octagonal lantern defied medieval engineering logic, basically inventing new mathematics to keep 400 tons floating on faith and timber.
12/40
12. Munich
[D] Munich | Frauenkirche's twin towers banned other buildings from exceeding their height, giving Munich's skyline a 99-meter ceiling enforced by democracy.
13/40
13. Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart
[A] Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart | Newark's French Gothic arrived fashionably late to America, finishing in 1954 with more gargoyles than a medieval nightmare.
14/40
14. Se Cathedral
[B] Se Cathedral | Goa's Portuguese-Gothic hybrid holds the Golden Bell, Asia's largest, which supposedly rings loud enough to convert heathens three villages away.
15/40
15. St. Stephen's Basilica
[A] St. Stephen's Basilica | Budapest's tallest building shares its 96-meter height with Parliament, keeping church and state equally close to heaven by law.
16/40
16. Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis (St. Louis)
[C] Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis (St. Louis) | Contains 41.5 million glass tesserae creating the world's largest mosaic collection, essentially wallpapering God's house in Byzantine pixels.
17/40
17. Saint Isaac's Cathedral
[C] Saint Isaac's Cathedral | St. Petersburg's golden dome required 100 kilos of gold leaf while 48 granite columns weighing 114 tons each traveled by barge from Finland.
18/40
18. Cathedral of Christ the Saviour
[A] Cathedral of Christ the Saviour | Stalin demolished the original for a swimming pool; post-Soviet Russia rebuilt it in five years using donations and titanium-nitride coated domes.
19/40
19. Saint Gregory the Illuminator Cathedral, Yerevan
[D] Saint Gregory the Illuminator Cathedral, Yerevan | Armenia's 1,700th Christianity anniversary gift to itself seats 1,700 people, because symbolism matters when you're the first Christian nation.
20/40
20. United States
[B] United States | Crystal Cathedral's 10,000 glass panels created America's first megachurch greenhouse, where prosperity gospel grew under California sunshine before bankruptcy wilted it.
21/40
21. Santiago de Chile
[B] Santiago de Chile | Neo-Byzantine Votive Temple thanks God for ending the 1918 plague, though taking 70 years to finish suggests gratitude has its limits.
22/40
22. Church of Saint Sava
[C] Church of Saint Sava | Belgrade's Orthodox giant sat unfinished for 70 years until Russia paid for the interior, making it Serbia's most expensive thank-you note.
23/40
23. Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine
[A] Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine | Oklahoma's $40 million shrine honors its first martyr priest, killed in Guatemala, proving sanctity can bloom even in tornado alley.
24/40
24. Uppsala Cathedral
[D] Uppsala Cathedral | Scandinavia's tallest cathedral houses King Gustav Vasa and botanist Linnaeus, mixing royal bones with scientific classification under Gothic arches.
25/40
25. Korea Army Training Center
[C] Korea Army Training Center | Military chapel proves even boot camp needs baroque, where recruits pray for survival between push-ups and kimchi rations.
26/40
26. Grace Cathedral
[A] Grace Cathedral | San Francisco's Episcopal headquarters features labyrinths both inside and outside, because finding God in California requires options.
27/40
27. Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul (Lewiston, Maine)
[D] Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul (Lewiston, Maine) | Franco-American mill workers built Maine's Gothic giant with pocket change, proving salvation comes in small denominations.
28/40
28. Sofia
[B] Sofia | Alexander Nevsky Cathedral's gold domes shelter 273 frescos while its bells rang communism's funeral in 1989, tolling democracy's awkward birth.
29/40
29. St. Charles Borromeo (Visalia)
[D] St. Charles Borromeo (Visalia) | California's Central Valley cathedral proves agriculture and architecture mix, rising from farmland like a particularly holy crop.
30/40
30. Christ Cathedral
[B] Christ Cathedral | Philip Johnson's glass star became Catholic after televangelist bankruptcy, proving even architecture can have conversion experiences in Orange County.
31/40
31. Westminster Abbey
[A] Westminster Abbey | Poets' Corner squeezes more literary genius per square meter than any library, with Shakespeare watching coronations from his memorial.
32/40
32. St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne
[C] St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne | Australia's tallest church took 80 years to finish its spires, finally completing them when the city discovered what Gothic actually meant.
33/40
33. Nagaland
[D] Nagaland | India's easternmost cathedral blends Naga tribal motifs with Christian imagery, creating theological fusion cuisine in architectural form.
34/40
34. Patras
[C] Patras | Greece's largest church holds St. Andrew's skull, returned from Rome after 500 years like the world's holiest library book.
35/40
35. St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney
[A] St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney | Australia's mother church replaced convict-built original after arson, upgrading from prisoner labor to professional Gothic in sandstone.
36/40
36. New York City
[B] New York City | Riverside Church's 74-bell carillon weighs 200 tons, making Manhattan's biggest noise complaint technically a religious experience.
37/40
37. Daegu
[D] Daegu | South Korea's Gothic surprise seats 5,000 Catholics where Buddhism dominated, proving conversion works better with pointed arches.
38/40
38. Helsinki Cathedral
[C] Helsinki Cathedral | Lutheran white elephant presides over Senate Square, its green domes visible to arriving ships like Christianity's lighthouse.
39/40
39. Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi (Santa Fe)
[A] Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi (Santa Fe) | Adobe Romanesque proves mud and God mix well in New Mexico, where Pueblo meets Pope in architectural peace.
40/40
40. Basilica of Our Lady of Dolours, Thrissur
[B] Basilica of Our Lady of Dolours, Thrissur | India's tallest church spire reaches 260 feet, apparently competing with coconut palms for Kerala's skyline supremacy.