The Most Beautiful Ancient Sacred Places in Asia
5 places in 3 countries · updated 6 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful ancient sacred places in Asia are Terracotta Army (People's Republic of China), Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Israel) and Etchmiadzin Cathedral (Armenia). The list covers 5 ancient sacred places in 3 countries. Armenia has the most, with 3. Last updated 6 October 2026.
An ancient sacred place keeps more than old stone: it keeps the moment a belief first took built form. Some of the earliest shrines of Christianity stand in Jerusalem and the Armenian highlands, where the faith became a state religion in the early 4th century, while in China an emperor's tomb army shows how far a ruler would go to carry his court into the afterlife.
The Terracotta Army, found by farmers digging a well near Xi'an in 1974, guards the tomb of Qin Shi Huang with thousands of life-size soldiers, each face modelled individually. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem was founded under Constantine in the 4th century over the sites venerated as Golgotha and the tomb of Christ. Etchmiadzin Cathedral, by tradition begun in 301, is often called the oldest cathedral in the world. Garni Temple, a colonnaded Ionic temple of the 1st century AD, was rebuilt from its own fallen stones in the 1970s. Sevanavank, founded in 874, stands on a rocky peninsula above the blue water of Lake Sevan.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Terracotta Army | Archaeological site | People's Republic of China | ✓ |
| 2 | Church of the Holy Sepulchre | Cathedral | Israel | |
| 3 | Etchmiadzin Cathedral | Cathedral | Armenia | ✓ |
| 4 | Garni Temple | Temple | Armenia | |
| 5 | Sevanavank | Monastery | Armenia |
01 Terracotta Army
People's Republic of China · 24.5 km from Weinan34.385° N 109.273° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by artemtation from Pixabay 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? Legs were built much like terracotta drainage pipes, and heads, arms and torsos were made separately before assembly.
02 Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Israel · 2.2 km from Jerusalem31.778° N 35.230° E
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jlascar/ · CC BY 2.0 The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is not one building but a knot of them, grown over seventeen centuries on the spot that Christian tradition identifies as both Golgotha, the hill of the crucifixion, and the rock-cut tomb from which Jesus rose.
Did you know? When the tomb was opened in 2016, mortar from just above the burial bed was dated to the mid-fourth century, consistent with the age of Constantine.
03 Etchmiadzin Cathedral
Armenia · 16.6 km from Ashtarak40.162° N 44.291° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Marcin Konsek · CC BY-SA 4.0 Etchmiadzin is the mother church of the Armenian Apostolic Church and has a strong claim to being the oldest cathedral in the world. Armenian tradition places its founding between 301 and 303, just after King Tiridates III made Armenia the first state to adopt Christianity.
Did you know? The bell tower once held a bell inscribed with a Tibetan Buddhist mantra, noted by travellers throughout the nineteenth century; it vanished after its removal in the late 1930s.
04 Garni Temple
Armenia · 20.1 km from Yerevan40.112° N 44.729° E
Image by Makalu from Pixabay Garni is the one classical colonnaded building that survives anywhere in Armenia — and indeed in the whole territory of the former Soviet Union. It stands on the edge of a triangular promontory at about 1,400 m, where the ground drops sheer into the gorge of the Azat River, with the Gegham mountains rising behind. 7 m high. Its compact, harmonious proportions have invited comparison with the Maison Carrée at Nîmes.
Did you know? In the wars of Shah Abbas in the early 1600s, iron clamps and lead were prised out of the temple to cast bullets, weakening it before the 1679 earthquake.
05 Sevanavank
Armenia · 24.8 km from Gavar40.564° N 45.011° E
Image by Taken from Pixabay Sevanavank stands on a narrow rocky headland above Lake Sevan, the great mountain lake of Armenia lying at about 1,900 metres. Two small stone churches with octagonal drums and conical roofs crown the ridge, with the wide blue water and the mountains of the far shore behind them — one of the best-known views in the country.
Did you know? The monastery is also known as Mariamashen, meaning built by Mariam, after its royal founder.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful ancient sacred places in Asia?
- On our list, Terracotta Army (People's Republic of China) ranks first, followed by Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Israel) and Etchmiadzin Cathedral (Armenia).
- Which country has the most ancient sacred places in Asia?
- In our collection, the most come from Armenia (3), Israel (1) and the People's Republic of China (1).
- Why is Garni Temple unique?
- Garni is the only standing Greco-Roman colonnaded building in Armenia and the wider former Soviet Union. It collapsed in an earthquake in 1679 and was reassembled, largely from its original stones, between 1969 and 1975.
- How was the Terracotta Army discovered?
- Local farmers digging a well in 1974 broke into one of the pits east of Qin Shi Huang's burial mound. Excavations since then have uncovered infantry, archers, cavalry horses and bronze chariots, and the emperor's tomb itself remains unopened.
- How many ancient sacred places are on this list in Asia?
- The list covers 5 ancient sacred places in 3 countries. Armenia has the most, with 3.