The most remarkable observatories in the world

The order is how widely a place is written about, not how pretty its photographs are. We count the language editions of Wikipedia that have an article about it and how often those articles are read: an article appears in a tenth language only when someone who does not speak the first nine decided the place was worth describing. Every entry says what its rank is made of.

Sort by: Most relevantRecomputed: 2026-09-11
United States Naval Academy3 US

United States Naval Academy

Academia Naval de los Estados Unidos

638 photographs by 29 photographers · 41 photographs in three years by 10 people

Harris & Ewing, photographer · Public domain

United States Naval Observatory15 US

United States Naval Observatory

Observatorio Naval de los Estados Unidos

81 photographs by 36 photographers · 8 photographs in three years by 6 people

Harris & Ewing, photographer · Public domain

Lick Observatory17 US

Lick Observatory

Observatorio Lick

127 photographs by 53 photographers · 10 photographs in three years by 6 people

Fæ · Public domain

Sphinx Observatory24 CH

Sphinx Observatory

Sphinx-Observatorium

129 photographs by 51 photographers · 1 Featured picture, 1× Quality image · 37 photographs in three years by 9 people

NOTE: This image is a panorama of Jungfraujoch Sphinx-Observatory consisting of 5 frames that were merged or stitched in PTGui Pro 12.2. As a result, this image necessarily underwent some form of digital manipulation. These manipulations may include blending, blurring, cloning, and color and perspective adjustments. As a result of these adjustments, the image content may be slightly different from reality at the points where multiple images were combined. This manipulation is often required due to lens, perspective, and parallax distortions. · CC BY-SA 4.0

Berlin Observatory25 DE

Berlin Observatory

Berliner Sternwarte

3 photographs by 2 photographers

F. Dümmler, 18th century · Public domain

English