
Ī sacred grove behind the House of the Vestal Virgins on the edge of the Roman Forum lingered until its last vestiges were burnt in the Great Fire of Rome in 64 CE. In Antiquity, the area had no town, but the grove was the site of one of the most famous of Roman cults and temples: that of Diana Nemorensis, a study of which served as the seed for Sir James Frazer's seminal work on the anthropology of religion, The Golden Bough. In central Italy, the town of Nemi recalls the Latin nemus Aricinum, or "grove of Ariccia", a small town a quarter of the way around the lake. Outside the walls of Athens, the site of the Platonic Academy was a sacred grove of olive trees, still recalled in the phrase "the groves of Academe". The most famous sacred groves in mainland Greece was the oak grove at Dodona. Singular trees which a community deems to hold religious significance are known as sacred trees. The Lakota and various other North American tribes regard particular forests or other natural landmarks as sacred places. During the Northern Crusades of the Middle Ages, conquering Christians commonly built churches on the sites of sacred groves. ") Examples of sacred groves include the Greco-Roman temenos, various Germanic words for sacred groves, and the Celtic nemeton, which was largely but not exclusively associated with Druidic practice. They were important features of the mythological landscape and cult practice of Celtic, Estonian, Baltic, Germanic, ancient Greek, Near Eastern, Roman, and Slavic polytheism they also occur in locations such as India, Japan ( sacred shrine forests ), West Africa and Ethiopia ( church forests. Sacred groves feature in various cultures throughout the world. Sacred groves or sacred woods are groves of trees and have special religious importance within a particular culture.

Ancient monoliths in Mawphlang sacred grove, India
