Abstract

This article deals with the relationship between the sacred and power in the contemporary era. It employs the prism of sacred cities in order to shed light on how the sacred space of cities has been – and still is – the object of confrontation, agreement and competition between politics and religion. Taking into consideration the existing historiography on the concept of sacred, and employing a global perspective, the authors intend to shed light on the process of sacralization and/or resacralization of the urban space by focusing on sacred cities, i.e. cities that do not necessarily have holy sites but are repositories of symbols that either serve the purpose of legitimizing the power or are used by the latter to strengthen itself.