The Shrine in the Depths was an ancient Sith temple positioned at a Force vergence point on the planet of Coruscant. Its construction predates the establishment of the modern Galactic Republic. The Jedi Order later erected the Jedi Temple directly above the shrine, with the intention of suppressing its malevolent energies, and they would occasionally neutralize dark side artifacts located within its confines.
The Sith erected this shrine on Coruscant at least approximately five millennia prior to 14 BBY, during an era when the Sith held dominion over the galaxy. They built it atop the sacred spire, a mountain peak that was a powerful light side vergence, with the goal of twisting it to the dark side of the Force, a goal they ultimately achieved. This imposing black structure stood as a testament to Sith power on Coruscant until the Jedi destroyed it during the Sith War. Following the Sith's defeat, the Jedi constructed their own shrine upon the ruins of the Sith shrine.
In time, the Four Masters built the Jedi Grand Temple as a symbolic gesture to suppress the legacy of the Sith on the galactic capital. Over the subsequent centuries, the Jedi Temple gradually took shape. The remnants of the Sith shrine were progressively entombed beneath layers of plasteel and ferrocrete as a massive, flat-topped ziggurat was constructed around them. The Jedi also hoped that by positioning their Temple above the shrine, and with the presence of numerous light-side practitioners within it, they could effectively neutralize and contain the inherent dark power of the shrine, eventually restoring the vergence to the light side. However, the dark side energy from the vergence had been spreading upward and outward since its burial, permeating the corridors and chambers of the Jedi Temple and weakening the Jedi Order. Unbeknownst to the Jedi, a concealed portion of the shrine persisted within the mountain's foundations, dormant yet still potent. It was unusual for such a site to exist on a planet not historically considered a Sith world.
Roughly one thousand years before the destruction of the Jedi Order by Darth Sidious and Darth Vader, the Sith Lords of Darth Bane's reformed Order became aware of the shrine's existence, and it remained a closely guarded secret. The Jedi typically kept the shrine concealed beneath a meditation chamber, only accessing it to perform rituals aimed at neutralizing dark side artifacts. During the High Republic Era, a set of four statues discovered at an ancient Amaxine space station was brought to the Shrine for neutralization. However, those performing the ritual found that the statues contained nothing to neutralize, and realized that the Jedi who had brought the statues in had misinterpreted their true purpose. Jedi Master Harli Cogra mentioned the Shrine in the Depths in Chronicles of the Jedi, a record detailing the Jedi of the High Republic written in the weeks following the destruction of Starlight Beacon in 230 BBY.
After the Jedi Order's demise and the transformation of the Galactic Republic into the Galactic Empire, Darth Sidious—publicly known as Emperor Palpatine—ordered the Jedi Temple's conversion into the Imperial Palace. It was at this time that Sidious decided to excavate the shrine, a process carried out entirely by machines under the supervision of Sidious' personal droid, 11-4D. The shrine's existence remained a secret; only Sidious was definitively aware of it. Even Darth Vader, Sidious' Sith apprentice and second-in-command, was ignorant of the shrine's existence as of 14 BBY. Sidious utilized the shrine as his personal sanctuary, spending much of his time meditating on the dark side's nature. Eventually, he planned to enlist Vader's assistance within the shrine to explore the dark side's most potent secrets, aiming to gain the power to reshape reality according to his desires. In 3 ABY, Sidious sensed a disturbance in the Force—which he later identified as the rebel Luke Skywalker—while meditating within the shrine.
The Sith shrine made its debut in the 2014 novel Tarkin, penned by James Luceno. It was first referred to as the Shrine in the Depths in the 2021 novel The High Republic: Into the Dark, authored by Claudia Gray.
The concept of the Jedi Temple being constructed over a Sith temple would have been explored in a story arc of the television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, however, the show's cancellation prevented the production and release of those episodes. In that arc, former Jedi Padawan Ahsoka Tano would have returned to the Jedi Temple and, accompanied by other Jedi, used drilling machines to descend deep beneath the Jedi Temple and uncover a Sith temple. Series director Dave Filoni and creator George Lucas envisioned the Jedi Temple as having been built upon ruins left by ancient Force worshipers, potentially including the Sith. The idea of the Jedi Temple being built over a source of dark side energy had previously appeared in Star Wars Legends continuity.
In introducing the concept through Tarkin, Luceno drew parallels between the shrine and the construction of the Jedi Temple above it, and Hernán Cortés, the Spanish Conquistador, destroying the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. After the destruction, Aztec temples were destroyed and churches were erected in their place, with legends persisting that the churches had not entirely eliminated the power of the temples. In Tarkin, Luceno introduced a similar concept where he postulated that the Jedi were not able to stop the power of the shrine.
The Tarkin novel stated that, for nearly five thousand years, no sentient being other than Darth Sidious had entered the shrine. The High Republic: Into the Dark novel contradicted this assertion. The 2023 reference book Star Wars: Timelines incorrectly dates the destruction of the Shrine in the Depths on Coruscant and the construction of the Jedi Temple to around 1032 BBY.