The Most Beautiful Ancient Temples in the World
6 places in 4 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful ancient temples in the world are Parthenon (Greece), Ġgantija (Malta) and Luxor Temple (Egypt). The list covers 6 ancient temples in 4 countries. Egypt has the most, with 2. Last updated 14 October 2026.
An ancient temple is more than an old building. It was the house of a god, built to last as long as the god was worshipped, and for that reason it was made of the most durable material and the best craftsmanship a society could command. That is why so many of the oldest standing structures on earth are temples, and why their columns, colonnades and processional ways still shape how we imagine sacred architecture.
Ġgantija on the Maltese island of Gozo is the oldest here by far: its megalithic walls, built around 3600 to 3200 BC, are older than Stonehenge and the pyramids of Giza, and local legend credited them to a race of giants. In Egypt, the Karnak Temple Complex grew over some two thousand years around the sanctuary of Amun, and its Great Hypostyle Hall holds 134 massive columns. Luxor Temple, built largely under Amenhotep III and Ramesses II, was linked to Karnak by an avenue of sphinxes, and one of its obelisks now stands in the Place de la Concorde in Paris.
The Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis, built between 447 and 432 BC for Athena, remains the reference point of classical architecture, its slight curves and leaning columns correcting the eye. Garni Temple in Armenia, a colonnaded Ionic temple of the 1st century AD on the edge of a gorge, fell in an earthquake in 1679 and was rebuilt from its original stones in the 20th century.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Parthenon | Ruins | Greece | ✓ |
| 2 | Ġgantija | Archaeological site | Malta | ✓ |
| 3 | Luxor Temple | Archaeological site | Egypt | ✓ |
| 4 | Karnak Temple Complex | Archaeological site | Egypt | ✓ |
| 5 | Garni Temple | Temple | Armenia | |
| 6 | Temple of Apollo Epicurius in Bassae | Ruins | Greece | ✓ |
01 Parthenon
Παρθενώνας
Greece · 1.6 km from Athens37.972° N 23.727° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by nonbirinonko from Pixabay 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.
02 Ġgantija
Malta · 27.5 km from Valletta36.047° N 14.269° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Vitold Muratov · CC BY-SA 4.0 Ġgantija stands on the edge of the Xagħra plateau on Gozo, the second island of the Maltese archipelago, and it is the oldest of the megalithic temples that make up the Maltese World Heritage listing. Its two temples were raised around 3600 BC, which puts them centuries ahead of the Egyptian pyramids.
Did you know? Ġgantija is regarded as the second-oldest surviving human-built religious structure in the world, younger only than Göbekli Tepe in Turkey.
03 Luxor Temple
Egypt · 1.1 km from Luxor25.700° N 32.639° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by DEZALB from Pixabay Luxor Temple rises on the east bank of the Nile in the middle of modern Luxor, ancient Thebes, and it is the one great temple of Egypt that sits inside a living town. The ancient Egyptians called it ipet resyt, the southern sanctuary.
Did you know? The temple was built of Nubian sandstone quarried at Gebel el-Silsila, upriver from Luxor.
04 Karnak Temple Complex
Egypt · 2.2 km from Luxor25.718° N 32.658° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by nadkol19 from Pixabay The Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak is large enough that Notre-Dame Cathedral would fit inside its footprint, held up by 134 sandstone columns, with the twelve tallest running down the central nave at about 21 metres high and roughly 10 metres around — big enough that a handful of people can link arms around the base of just one.
Did you know? The obelisk now in front of Rome's Lateran Palace began at Karnak around 1400 BC and was shipped to Rome by Emperor Constantius II in 357 AD.
05 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.
06 Temple of Apollo Epicurius in Bassae
Ναός Επικούριου Απόλλωνα
Greece37.430° N 21.900° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Jean Housen · CC BY-SA 4.0 On a bare limestone shoulder of Mount Kotilion, more than 1,100 metres up in the wild hills where ancient Arcadia met Messenia, stands one of the best-preserved temples of classical Greece. Its name, Bassai, means roughly a little vale among the rocks, and the setting is exactly that: grey stone, oak scrub and a long view over ridges towards the sea.
Did you know? Bassae became the first Greek site on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1986.
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 temples in the world?
- On our list, Parthenon (Greece) ranks first, followed by Ġgantija (Malta) and Luxor Temple (Egypt).
- Which country has the most ancient temples in the world?
- In our collection, the most come from Egypt (2), Greece (2) and Armenia (1).
- What is the oldest temple in the world?
- Among free-standing temples, the megalithic temples of Malta, such as Ġgantija on Gozo, are among the oldest, dating from around 3600 BC. Göbekli Tepe in Turkey is far older, but whether it was a temple in the usual sense is debated.
- Why is the Parthenon built with curves?
- The Parthenon has almost no straight lines: its platform curves slightly upward, its columns swell and lean inward. These refinements are usually explained as corrections for optical illusions that make long straight lines look sagging.
- Why is Garni Temple unique?
- Garni is the only standing Greco-Roman colonnaded temple in Armenia and the former Soviet Union. It collapsed in an earthquake in 1679 and was reassembled in the 1970s, largely from its original stones.
- How many ancient temples are on this list in the world?
- The list covers 6 ancient temples in 4 countries. Egypt has the most, with 2.