The Greatest UNESCO-Listed Archaeological Wonders in the World

149 places in 60 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Baalbek

   Lebanon · 33 km from Zahlé34.006° N 36.209° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Nowhere else did Rome build on quite this scale. On a hill in Lebanon's Beqaa Valley, where the city of Heliopolis once worshipped a local storm god under the name of Jupiter, the imperial architects raised a sanctuary on a platform whose retaining walls are made of single stones.

   Did you know? In 2014 archaeologists found a block beside the Stone of the Pregnant Woman measuring about 19.6 by 6 by 5.5 metres and weighing an estimated 1,650 tonnes.

   More about Baalbek →

2. 02 Nazca Lines

   Líneas de Nazca

   Peru · 25.6 km from Nasca14.697° S 75.135° W

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Maria Reiche, a German mathematician, spent roughly forty years on foot in the Peruvian desert measuring, mapping and defending the Nazca Lines from a rented broom cupboard of a house nearby, and it was her work that popularized the idea that the lines formed a giant celestial calendar — tracking solstices, marking the paths of stars, even predicting eclipses.

   Did you know? The lines and geoglyphs were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994.

   More about Nazca Lines →

3. 03 Butrint

   Albania · 13.4 km from Saranda39.757° N 20.017° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Butrint sits on a hill above the Vivari Channel, close to the Straits of Corfu, and in one walk you pass through some 2,500 years of Mediterranean history: a Greek theatre, Roman baths, a Byzantine baptistery, a Venetian fortress and the castle of Ali Pasha. It is the most important archaeological site in Albania, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1992 and the heart of a national park created in 2000.

   Did you know? Butrint's local calendar is among those inscribed on the Antikythera Mechanism, the oldest known analogue computer, made around 150 to 100 BC.

   More about Butrint →

4. 04 Angkor Wat

   Cambodia · 5.4 km from Siem Reap13.412° N 103.867° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Angkor Wat is the largest religious monument on Earth and the one building every Cambodian knows. It appears on the national flag. King Suryavarman II commissioned it in the first half of the 12th century as the state temple of his capital, Yaśodharapura, and dedicated it to Vishnu. It was most likely also intended as his mausoleum.

   Did you know? The temple was built from an estimated five to ten million sandstone blocks, the heaviest weighing about 1.5 tonnes.

   More about Angkor Wat →

5. 05 Stonehenge

   United Kingdom51.179° N 1.826° W

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Stonehenge wasn't built — it was built, rebuilt, and rearranged over roughly 1,500 years, and what stands today is really the last of several distinct monuments on the same spot. The earliest phase, a circular ditch and bank enclosing cremated human remains, dates to around 3000 BCE.

   Did you know? Studies published in 2024 traced the Altar Stone not to Wales but to the Orcadian Basin of north-east Scotland, roughly 700 km away.

   More about Stonehenge →

6. 06 Diocletian's Palace

   Dioklecijanova palača

   Croatia · 2.9 km from Split43.508° N 16.438° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Diocletian, the emperor who divided power among four rulers and then did something rare for a Roman emperor — abdicated, in 305 — chose a peninsula on the Dalmatian coast for his retirement, a few kilometres from Salona, the provincial capital.

   Did you know? According to ancient sources, when asked to return to power Diocletian replied that anyone who saw the cabbages he grew would never suggest it.

   More about Diocletian's Palace →

7. 07 Cave of Altamira

   Cueva de Altamira

   Spain · 25.7 km from Santander43.383° N 4.117° W

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The Cave of Altamira, near Santillana del Mar in Cantabria, holds some of the finest Palaeolithic art in the world, and no other cave in northern Spain has such complex and crowded painting. The cave is about 270 m long, a series of passages in the limestone of Mount Vispieres.

   More about Cave of Altamira →

8. 08 Somapura Mahavihara

   Bangladesh25.031° N 88.977° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Somapura Mahavihara, at Paharpur in northwestern Bangladesh, is the ruin of one of the largest Buddhist monasteries ever built south of the Himalayas. Seals found during excavation name it as a foundation of the Pala king Dharmapala, who ruled Bengal around the late eighth and early ninth centuries, though Tibetan sources credit his successor Devapala.

   Did you know? Tibetan sources count Somapura among the five great monastic universities of Pala-era eastern India, and by area it was the largest of them.

   More about Somapura Mahavihara →

9. 09 Kailasa Temple, Ellora

   India · 23.8 km from Aurangabad20.024° N 75.179° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Most temples are built up from the ground. This one was made by removing everything around it. Carvers began at the top of a basalt cliff and worked downward and inward, cutting three deep trenches to isolate a single block of rock before shaping it into a temple from the outside in — meaning that at no point in the process could they add material back if a cut went wrong.

   Did you know? The top of the shrine rises 32.6 m above the courtyard floor, and the U-shaped court cut around it measures about 82 by 46 m.

   More about Kailasa Temple, Ellora →

10. 10 Hampi

    India · 11.1 km from Hospet15.335° N 76.462° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Hampi is what remains of Vijayanagara, capital of the last great Hindu empire of South India. From 1336 until 1565 the city spread along the Tungabhadra River, and by around 1500 it may have been the second-largest city in the world after Beijing, drawing merchants from Persia and Portuguese Goa. In 1565 a coalition of Deccan sultanates defeated the empire's army, and the city was sacked and abandoned.

    Did you know? In 1442 the Persian envoy Abdul Razzaq described the city as enclosed by seven rings of fortifications, the inner ones packed with shops and bazaars.

    More about Hampi →

11. 11 Palmyra

    Syria · 1.2 km from Tadmur34.550° N 38.270° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Palmyra was a caravan city in an oasis of the Syrian Desert, about 215 km northeast of Damascus, and for three centuries it was one of the richest places in the Roman East. Its merchants ran trade routes between the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia and set up trading colonies along the Silk Road, and their wealth paid for a city whose architecture mixed Greek and Roman forms with local Semitic traditions.

    Did you know? Palmyra's tax law of AD 137, carved in Greek and Palmyrene on a 5 m slab, went to the Russian tsar in 1901 and is now in the Hermitage.

    More about Palmyra →

12. 12 Prambanan Temple

    Indonesia · 13.2 km from Yogyakarta City7.752° S 110.491° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Local legend explains Prambanan's scale with a story dark enough that it kept people away for centuries: Prince Bandung Bondowoso wanted to marry Princess Roro Jonggrang, who agreed only if he could build a thousand temples in a single night. With the help of spirits he very nearly managed it — so she had the villagers light fires and pound rice to fake the approach of dawn, tricking the spirits into stopping short.

    Did you know? An inscription dated 856 records that the builders diverted a river, now the Opak, away from the main shrine and levelled its old bed to make room for more temples.

    More about Prambanan Temple →

13. 13 Valley of the Kings

    Egypt · 6.5 km from Luxor25.740° N 32.602° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    For nearly five centuries, from about 1539 to 1075 BC, the pharaohs of the New Kingdom were buried not under pyramids but in tombs cut deep into a dry valley on the west bank of the Nile opposite Thebes, modern Luxor. The valley lies beneath al-Qurn, a pyramid-shaped peak that may have been part of its appeal, and its hidden entrances were meant to defeat the robbers who had emptied the older royal tombs.

    Did you know? Workmen who cut and painted the royal tombs lived in the nearby village of Deir el-Medina, and their records include what may be history's first documented labour strike.

    More about Valley of the Kings →

14. 14 Parthenon

    Παρθενώνας

    Greece · 1.6 km from Athens37.972° N 23.727° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Parthenon looks perfectly straight only because almost nothing about it actually is.

    Did you know? On 26 September 1687 a Venetian mortar round hit gunpowder stored inside by the Ottoman garrison, and the blast killed about 300 people.

    More about Parthenon →

15. 15 Petra

    Jordan · 32.1 km from Ma'an30.329° N 35.442° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    For centuries Petra existed mainly in local Bedouin knowledge and old texts, unseen by European travelers, until the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt talked his way in in 1812 by posing as a Muslim pilgrim — the disguise mattered because outsiders weren't otherwise let anywhere near the site.

    Did you know? The Monastery, Ad Deir, is the largest monument at Petra, about 45 metres tall and 50 metres wide.

    More about Petra →

16. 16 Visoki Dečani

    Manastiri i Deçanit

    Kosovo · 13.1 km from Pejë42.547° N 20.266° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Visoki Dečani is a Serbian Orthodox monastery at the foot of the mountains on the western edge of Kosovo, and its church is the largest surviving medieval church in the Balkans. King Stefan Dečanski began it in 1327 as his own burial church; he died in 1331 before it was finished, and his son Stefan Dušan completed the work.

    Did you know? A carved inscription over the south portal names the builder as Fra Vita, a Franciscan friar from Kotor, and says the church took eight years to build.

    More about Visoki Dečani →

17. 17 Terracotta Army

    People's Republic of China · 24.5 km from Weinan34.385° N 109.273° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The farmer who found the Terracotta Army wasn't looking for it. In March 1974, Yang Zhifa, his five brothers and a neighbor were digging a well during a drought, hoping only for water, when at about three metres down they hit a layer of charcoal and reddened soil, and past four metres one of them pulled up a life-sized pottery head.

    Did you know? The paint on the figures is so fragile that, once exposed to Xi'an's dry air, its lacquer base can curl within seconds and flake off in minutes.

    More about Terracotta Army →

18. 18 Su Nuraxi di Barumini

    Area archeologica di Su Nuraxi

    Italy39.703° N 9.000° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Sardinia is dotted with nuraghi, the stone towers of the Bronze Age Nuragic civilization, and Su Nuraxi at Barumini is the most complete of them. The name simply means "the nuraghe" in Campidanese Sardinian. Scholars regard it as the most impressive expression of that civilization, and it was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1997.

    Did you know? Until 1949 the whole complex lay buried under earth and looked like just another low hill, until torrential rains washed soil away and exposed its stones.

    More about Su Nuraxi di Barumini →

19. 19 Roman Theatre of Orange

    Théâtre antique d'Orange

    France44.136° N 4.809° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Roman Theatre of Orange is one of the best-preserved Roman theatres anywhere, and its great stage wall still stands to its full original height. It was built early in the 1st century AD under Augustus for the Roman colony of Arausio, founded by veterans of the Second Legion. UNESCO inscribed it as a World Heritage Site in 1981.

    Did you know? Louis XIV is said to have called the theatre's outer facade the most beautiful wall in his kingdom.

    More about Roman Theatre of Orange →

20. 20 Ephesus

    Efes

    Turkey · 21.6 km from Söke37.940° N 27.349° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Ephesus is one of the largest Roman cities left standing in the eastern Mediterranean, and one of the few where you can walk a marble street from end to end and understand how a great ancient city worked. Founded by Ionian Greeks in the 10th century BC, it became one of the leading cities of Roman Asia, a centre of early Christianity and, until its harbour silted up, one of the busiest ports of the Aegean.

    Did you know? The Temple of Artemis took about 120 years to build and was burned down in 356 BC.

    More about Ephesus →

21. 21 Abu Simbel

    Egypt22.337° N 31.626° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Abu Simbel is two temples cut into a sandstone hill on the west bank of Lake Nasser, in Egypt's far south close to the Sudanese border. Ramesses II had them carved in the 13th century BC, at the Second Cataract where Egypt met Nubia, and they were meant to be seen from the river as a statement of pharaonic power.

    Did you know? Carving the temples took about twenty years, from roughly 1264 to 1244 BC.

    More about Abu Simbel →

22. 22 Tassili n'Ajjer

    Algeria25.667° N 9.000° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage
    • UNESCO natural beauty

    

    Tassili n'Ajjer — "plateau of rivers" in Berber — is a sandstone upland of more than 72,000 square kilometres in south-eastern Algeria, near the borders with Libya and Niger, and it holds one of the densest concentrations of prehistoric rock art on Earth. Some 15,000 paintings and engravings have been recorded in its shelters and gorges.

    Did you know? Optically stimulated luminescence dating suggests most of the plateau's rock art was made in the ninth and tenth millennia before the present.

    More about Tassili n'Ajjer →

23. 23 Teotihuacan

    Mexico · 30.8 km from Zumpango19.692° N 98.844° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Long before the Aztecs arrived in the Valley of Mexico, Teotihuacan was already a ruin they could only guess about. The Nahuatl name they gave it is usually translated as the place where the gods were born, and in their cosmology it was here that the present sun had been created.

    Did you know? About 17 metres beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, archaeologists found a miniature mountain landscape with tiny pools of liquid mercury standing in for lakes.

    More about Teotihuacan →

24. 24 Qutb complex

    India · 8.5 km from New Delhi28.524° N 77.185° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Qutb complex in Mehrauli, in the south of Delhi, is where the architecture of the Delhi Sultanate begins.

    Did you know? Phosphorus-rich iron lets a protective film form on the iron pillar, and in some 1,600 years that film has grown only about a twentieth of a millimetre thick.

    More about Qutb complex →

25. 25 Tikal

    Guatemala17.222° N 89.624° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Tikal is the Maya city at its most theatrical: grey limestone pyramids breaking through the canopy of the Petén rainforest in northern Guatemala, with howler monkeys and ocellated turkeys for company. It was the capital of one of the most powerful Maya kingdoms, occupied from at least the 4th century BC and at its height between about AD 200 and 900, before its population drained away and the forest closed over it.

    Did you know? Tikal stood in for the rebel base on the moon Yavin 4 in the original 1977 Star Wars film.

    More about Tikal →

26. 26 San Agustin archeological park

    Parque Arqueológico de San Agustín

    Colombia1.884° N 76.296° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    In the green hills around the headwaters of the Magdalena River in southern Colombia, hundreds of stone figures stand guard over ancient tombs. San Agustín holds the largest group of religious monuments and megalithic sculpture in Latin America: more than 600 statues are known from the region, carved by a people whose name and language are unknown.

    Did you know? The Fuente de Lavapatas is a network of channels cut into the rock of a stream bed, carved with human, amphibian and reptile figures.

    More about San Agustin archeological park →

27. 27 Tiwanaku

    Bolivia · 39.7 km from Desaguadero16.555° S 68.673° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Tiwanaku, on the high plain south of Lake Titicaca, was the centre of one of the great civilisations of the Andes. The city grew in the first centuries AD, flourished from about 375 to 700, and at its peak covered some 4 square km with a population of well over 10,000. Tiwanaku imagery and trade spread across the southern Andes. Its society collapsed around 1000 AD, probably helped by a long drought.

    Did you know? The builders locked stones together with I-shaped clamps of an unusual copper-arsenic-nickel bronze, some poured molten straight into the carved sockets.

    More about Tiwanaku →

28. 28 Ajanta Caves

    India20.553° N 75.700° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Buddhist monks who carved these thirty caves into a horseshoe-shaped gorge weren't just after dramatic scenery — the site served as a monsoon retreat, a place where monks, pilgrims and travelling merchants sheltered during the rains, when travel across the region became difficult.

    Did you know? The major Robert Gill spent almost twenty years copying the murals, but all but four of his 27 large copies burned in the Crystal Palace fire in London in 1866.

    More about Ajanta Caves →

29. 29 Pasargadae

    Iran30.200° N 53.179° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Pasargadae is where the Persian Empire began to think of itself in stone. Cyrus the Great founded it in the 6th century BC, close to the field where he defeated the Median king Astyages in 550 BC, and named it after his own clan.

    More about Pasargadae →

30. 30 Arles Amphitheatre

    Arènes d'Arles

    France · 28.3 km from Nîmes43.678° N 4.631° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    In the middle of Arles, the old Roman amphitheatre still dominates the city, its two tiers of arches curving around an oval arena. Built around AD 90, shortly after the Colosseum in Rome, it is about 136 metres long and 109 metres wide and held some twenty thousand spectators for gladiatorial combats and animal hunts.

    Did you know? To make room for the amphitheatre, Roman engineers demolished part of the Augustan city wall built on the Hauture hill only a century earlier.

    More about Arles Amphitheatre →