Subcategories

Yoruba Sites

3 of 427 entries in Sacred Sites. Click any to see everything it connects to.

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "Yoruba Sites." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://divinity.interactivelion.com/subcategories/sacredsite/yoruba-sites.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). Yoruba Sites. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://divinity.interactivelion.com/subcategories/sacredsite/yoruba-sites

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-yoruba-sites,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {Yoruba Sites},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://divinity.interactivelion.com/subcategories/sacredsite/yoruba-sites},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Sites significant to Yoruba religious tradition, centred on the orisha and on cities such as Ile-Ife regarded within the tradition as a place of origin. Yoruba religious practice also underlies traditions that developed from it in the Americas, including Santeria and Candomble, though those are treated separately from the West African sites here.

Facts

Overview

What Defines This Grouping

Sites of orisa worship in Yorubaland: groves and rivers attached to particular orisa, lineage and palace shrines, and Ile-Ife, from which Yoruba tradition dates the creation of the world and from which every oba traces the right to rule. 2

Peoples and Traditions Covered

The Yoruba are a cluster of subgroups - Oyo, Ife, Ijesa, Ekiti, Egba, Ijebu, Ondo, Owo, Ketu and others - each with its own dominant orisa and its own account of descent from Ile-Ife. There is no single Yoruba pantheon held unchanged across them. 2

Status

Status Today

Living, in Nigeria, Benin and Togo, and the acknowledged source of the Candomble, Lucumi and other American orisha traditions, whose practitioners travel to these sites as to a source rather than as visitors. 3

Learn More

Yoruba Sacred Sites

This group holds sacred sites of the Yoruba tradition of West Africa, the sacred groves, shrines and cities bound to the orishas and to the sacred history of the Yoruba people, whose religion also gave rise to the diaspora traditions of the Americas.

The browser will find the sites the atlas gathers. The entries describe each place's association with the orishas and its role in Yoruba religious life.

Cross-Tradition Connections