"The Emergence of Sacred Travel" is a project that aims to build an internationally recognized environment for the study of ancient pilgrimage, an emerging topic that is currently reshaping our understanding of the interconnections between the religious traditions of the Mediterranean Basin, from Greek and Roman religions to Christianity and Islam. In particular, the project focuses on the material and visual dimensions of pilgrimage.

Bridging traditional chronological and disciplinary divisions, it seeks to explore the extent to which Greece and Rome constituted the cultural and religious background to the development of early Christian and Islamic pilgrimage.

By tracing the emergence of sacred travel within this cultural sphere, we get a clearer picture of the phenomenon’s later historical trajectory, including Islamic Hajj, Medieval travel to the Holy Land and contemporary traditions of pilgrimage.

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