The Most Beautiful Buildings in Asia

50 places in 13 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Taipei 101

   Taiwan · 0.4 km from Taipei25.034° N 121.565° E

   

   The tower's shape isn't just aesthetic bamboo-inspired styling — it's structurally load-bearing symbolism. The building rises in eight repeating segments, each one flaring slightly outward as it climbs before tapering back in, echoing the swelling joints of a bamboo stalk.

   Did you know? The tower stands on 380 piles, each 1.5 metres wide, driven about 80 metres into the ground.

   More about Taipei 101 →

2. 02 Petronas Towers

   Malaysia · 3.2 km from Kuala Lumpur3.158° N 101.712° E

   

   The engineering was as ambitious as the silhouette. Test borings showed that half the original site sat on decayed limestone, so the whole footprint was shifted about 60 metres to rest on firmer rock. The towers stand on piles bored up to 114 metres deep beneath thick concrete rafts. Imported steel was expensive, so the structure is mostly high-strength reinforced concrete. That material damps sway well but doubles the load on the foundations.

   Did you know? The arch carrying the skybridge has legs about 51 metres long, each bolted to the 29th floor of its tower.

   More about Petronas Towers →

3. 03 Bolshoi Theatre

   Russia · 0.8 km from Moscow55.760° N 37.619° E

   

   The company dates its birth to 1776, when Catherine II licensed Prince Pyotr Urusov to stage theatrical performances in Moscow; the English entrepreneur Michael Maddox became his partner. Fire shadowed its early decades: the Petrovka theatre burned in 1805, and its successor on the Arbat was lost in the blaze of 1812 during the French occupation.

   Did you know? The 2005–2011 restoration officially cost about 21 billion roubles, and some independent estimates put the real figure considerably higher.

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4. 04 Burj Al Arab

   United Arab Emirates · 13.1 km from Dubai25.141° N 55.185° E

   

   The drama is structural as well as graphic. The hotel stands on an artificial island about 280 metres offshore from Jumeirah Beach, joined to land by a private bridge. Because the island is made of reclaimed sand, the tower is held up by 230 concrete piles, each 40 metres long.

   Did you know? The famous seven-star label was never official; it came from a British journalist on a pre-opening tour, while the hotel itself carries five-star ratings.

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5. 05 Terracotta Army

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

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   What makes the find keep giving up new detail is that no two soldiers are alike. Heads were sculpted separately from the mass-produced bodies, which let craftsmen vary hairstyle, facial features, ear shape and expression figure by figure across a workforce of thousands — more than 8,000 figures are believed to exist in total, of which just over 2,000 have been excavated from three pits so far, leaving an estimated 6,000 still underground.

   Did you know? Legs were built much like terracotta drainage pipes, and heads, arms and torsos were made separately before assembly.

   More about Terracotta Army →

6. 06 Hagia Sophia

   Ayasofya

   Turkey · 1.1 km from Istanbul41.008° N 28.980° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The dome proved as fragile as it was bold. The original collapsed after an earthquake in 558, and Isidore the Younger rebuilt it about six metres higher and ribbed, so that its thrust would fall more steeply into the walls; later partial collapses were repaired in turn. The forty windows around its base make the dome seem to hover on a ring of light while also lightening its load.

   Did you know? The present building is the third church on the site; the first was consecrated in 360 and the second, by Theodosius II, in 415.

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7. 07 National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing

   People's Republic of China · 0.9 km from Beijing39.903° N 116.384° E

   

   The numbers explain the effect. The dome is about 212 metres long, 144 metres wide and 46 metres high, clad in more than 18,000 titanium plates, with a seam of over a thousand panels of ultra-clear glass running down the middle like a curtain being drawn apart.

   Did you know? Its steel frame alone weighs some 6,750 tonnes.

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8. 08 Forbidden City

   People's Republic of China · 1.6 km from Beijing39.916° N 116.391° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The layout is a rectangle about 960 by 750 metres, surrounded by a moat 52 metres wide and a wall almost 8 metres high, with elaborate corner towers. Roughly 980 buildings survive, all laid out along the north-south axis that still structures central Beijing, running from Tiananmen through the palace to Jingshan Park.

   Did you know? Its pillars were whole logs of precious nanmu wood brought from the jungles of southwestern China.

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9. 09 Shanghai Tower

   People's Republic of China · 6.6 km from Shanghai31.235° N 121.501° E

   

   The design is by the American firm Gensler, with a team led by the Shanghai-born architect Jun Xia. The building is really two towers in one: an inner stack of nine cylindrical buildings, 128 floors in all, wrapped in a separate outer glass skin that twists through 120 degrees as it rises. The twist cuts wind loads on the tower by about a quarter, which saved a quarter of the structural steel a conventional design would have needed.

   Did you know? In 2022 Guinness World Records recognised its 120th-floor restaurant, at about 556 metres, as the highest restaurant in a building.

   More about Shanghai Tower →

10. 10 Burj Khalifa

    United Arab Emirates · 2.3 km from Dubai25.197° N 55.274° E

    

    The design came from the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, with Adrian Smith as chief architect and Bill Baker as structural engineer. The plan is a three-lobed Y around a buttressed central core, a shape chosen to make the most of apartment and hotel space while the wings brace the tower.

    Did you know? Construction used about 330,000 cubic metres of concrete and 55,000 tonnes of steel reinforcing bar.

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11. 11 Jin Mao Tower

    People's Republic of China · 6.7 km from Shanghai31.237° N 121.501° E

    

    The result reads as a modern pagoda. Instead of a sheer glass prism the tower steps back in rhythmic tiers that quicken as it climbs, so the silhouette narrows in an almost organic taper towards the spire. The curtain wall of glass, stainless steel, aluminium and granite is overlaid with a lattice of aluminium tubes that gives the surface a fine, shifting texture as the light changes.

    More about Jin Mao Tower →

12. 12 Komsomolskaya Metro Station (Circle Line)

    Russia · 3.7 km from Moscow55.776° N 37.656° E

    

    The design was Alexey Shchusev's, carried through to completion by a team that included Viktor Kokorin.

    Did you know? The vaulted ceiling, now famous for its yellow colour, was originally painted blue.

    More about Komsomolskaya Metro Station (Circle Line) →

13. 13 Topkapı Palace

    Turkey · 1 km from Istanbul41.013° N 28.984° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Topkapı is not one grand building but a sequence of courts, each more private than the last. The Imperial Gate leads into a broad outer court once open to the public; the Gate of Salutation admits you to the second court, where the vast kitchens — rebuilt by the architect Sinan after a fire in 1574 — now display one of the world's great collections of Chinese porcelain, some 10,700 pieces.

    Did you know? The emerald-hilted Topkapı Dagger was made in 1747 as a gift for Nader Shah of Persia, who was assassinated before the embassy left Ottoman lands.

    More about Topkapı Palace →

14. 14 Heydar Aliyev Center

    Azerbaijan · 0.6 km from Baku40.395° N 49.867° E

    

    The trick of the design is that the structure hides itself. A steel space frame working together with concrete cores carries the free-form skin, so the interior can open into vast column-free halls, and the cladding is made of almost 17,000 panels of glass-fibre-reinforced concrete and polyester, nearly every one of a different shape, their joints sweeping across the curves as fine lines.

    Did you know? Among its first major shows was an Andy Warhol retrospective in 2013 featuring more than one hundred of his works.

    More about Heydar Aliyev Center →

15. 15 Kolomenskoye

    Russia · 10.2 km from Moscow55.668° N 37.667° E

    

    The estate's most important building has nothing to do with that legend — it's the Church of the Ascension, raised in 1532 on the orders of Grand Prince Vasily III to celebrate the birth of his son, who would grow up to become Ivan the Terrible.

    Did you know? Peter the Great's small 18th-century log house, brought from the banks of the Northern Dvina, now stands in the park.

    More about Kolomenskoye →

16. 16 Tokyo Skytree

    Japan · 6.1 km from Tokyo35.710° N 139.811° E

    

    The form changes as it rises: a three-legged base gives way to a cylinder from about 350 m upwards. Its colour, officially Skytree White, is based on aijiro, a traditional pale indigo-white, and at night LED lighting alternates between Iki, a pale sky blue, and Miyabi, a deep purple.

    Did you know? The tower was completed on 29 February 2012, a leap day, at a cost of about 65 billion yen.

    More about Tokyo Skytree →

17. 17 Canton Tower

    People's Republic of China · 6.1 km from Guangzhou23.109° N 113.319° E

    

    It is the second-tallest tower in China and one of the tallest free-standing structures in the world. The main body is 450 m high and the antenna adds another 150; inside are TV and radio facilities, restaurants including a two-storey revolving one, gardens, cinemas and exhibition spaces.

    Did you know? The tower weighs about 100,000 tonnes, of which the antenna mast accounts for roughly 1,550 tonnes.

    More about Canton Tower →

18. 18 Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus

    India · 14.9 km from Mumbai18.940° N 72.835° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    It's also never stopped being exactly what it was built to be. More than three million commuters pass through daily, making it one of the busiest railway stations on the planet — a 19th-century monument functioning, unglamorously and continuously, as ordinary infrastructure rather than something roped off for tourists.

    Did you know? The station was named Victoria Terminus after the queen, in connection with her Golden Jubilee year of 1887, and was renamed after the Maratha ruler Shivaji in 1996.

    More about Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus →

19. 19 CCTV Headquarters, Beijing

    People's Republic of China · 5.6 km from Beijing39.915° N 116.457° E

    

    The design came from Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, who won an international competition — with a jury that included Arata Isozaki and Charles Jencks — and signed the contract on 1 January 2002. Cecil Balmond of Arup led the engineering, a formidable task in an earthquake zone. Construction began on 1 June 2004.

    Did you know? On 9 February 2009, fireworks set off during the Lantern Festival set fire to the neighbouring Television Cultural Center, killing one firefighter.

    More about CCTV Headquarters, Beijing →

20. 20 Museum of the Future

    United Arab Emirates · 0.7 km from Dubai25.219° N 55.282° E

    

    The words are three sayings of Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, about imagination, legacy and innovation, drawn by the Emirati calligrapher Mattar Bin Lahej. The windows are simply the gaps inside the letterforms, so the text is the glazing.

    Did you know? In February 2023 it received LEED Platinum, the highest rating of the US Green Building Council's sustainability scheme.

    More about Museum of the Future →

21. 21 National Palace Museum

    Taiwan · 7.6 km from Taipei25.102° N 121.549° E

    

    The collection's journey is part of its story. The Palace Museum was founded in Beijing's Forbidden City on 10 October 1925, shortly after the last emperor, Puyi, was expelled from the palace. As the Japanese threat grew, the treasures were packed into crates and sent to Shanghai in 1933, then moved further west along several routes, staying ahead of the war until Japan's surrender in 1945.

    Did you know? A small hall at Beigou, opened in 1957 with help from the Asia Foundation, could show only about 200 objects at a time.

    More about National Palace Museum →

22. 22 National Museum of Qatar

    Qatar · 1.7 km from Doha25.288° N 51.549° E

    

    At the heart of the complex stands the restored early-20th-century palace once occupied by Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani, a former ruler of Qatar. The 1975 museum had already been built around it, and Nouvel's discs now curl around it in turn, so the old palace becomes the largest object in the collection.

    Did you know? To fill the first museum, British archaeologist Beatrice de Cardi led excavations in Qatar in 1973–74, finding Neolithic Ubaid pottery at Al Da'asa.

    More about National Museum of Qatar →

23. 23 Tokyo Tower

    Japan · 3.2 km from Tokyo35.659° N 139.746° E

    

    Its colours are set by aviation rules: bands of white and international orange, renewed roughly every seven years with some 28,000 litres of paint in a job that takes a year. It remained Japan's tallest structure until Tokyo Skytree was completed in 2012 and took over television broadcasting, though FM radio stations still transmit from the tower.

    Did you know? The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake bent the tip of the antenna, and during repairs in 2012 the tower briefly stood only 315 metres tall.

    More about Tokyo Tower →

24. 24 Main Building of Moscow State University

    Russia · 7.7 km from Moscow55.703° N 37.531° E

    

    The commission first went in 1947 to Boris Iofan, but his design placed the tower on the very edge of the Sparrow Hills escarpment, where the ground was prone to landslides, and the job was handed to Lev Rudnev. Rudnev, already known for the Frunze Military Academy, moved the building about 800 m back from the cliff; the engineering team was led by Vsevolod Nasonov.

    Did you know? Thousands of prisoners took part in the construction, and accounts describe a separate camp section for about 700 inmates on the 22nd floor.

    More about Main Building of Moscow State University →

25. 25 Louvre Abu Dhabi

    United Arab Emirates · 8.1 km from Abu Dhabi24.533° N 54.400° E

    

    Beneath the dome, the museum is laid out like an Arab town rather than a single building. Some fifty-five low white blocks, twenty-three of them galleries, are separated by lanes and small plazas and edged by water, so that visitors move between rooms along shaded promenades. The dome itself, weighing thousands of tonnes, rests on just four supports hidden inside the pavilions and appears to float.

    Did you know? The agreement with France bars any other Louvre-branded museum in the other emirates and in about a dozen countries of the Gulf and Middle East.

    More about Louvre Abu Dhabi →

26. 26 Peter and Paul Fortress

    Russia · 1 km from Saint Petersburg59.950° N 30.317° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Instead it became the state's most feared jail. From the early eighteenth century until the early 1920s the Trubetskoy Bastion held political prisoners, and during the revolutions of 1917 the fortress changed sides several times. In October 1917 its guns fired on the Winter Palace, and in January 1919 four grand dukes of the Romanov family were shot inside its walls.

    Did you know? The angel on top of the cathedral spire, which also serves as a weathervane, is about 3.2 metres tall.

    More about Peter and Paul Fortress →

27. 27 Hermitage Museum

    Russia · 0.1 km from Saint Petersburg59.941° N 30.314° E

    

    Today the core of the museum is a chain of buildings along Palace Embankment. The Winter Palace, the Romanovs' official residence, was built largely to designs by Bartolomeo Rastrelli in Elizabethan Baroque, its green-and-white main façade running about 215 metres; much of its interior was remade after a fire in 1837.

    Did you know? Leonardo's Madonna Litta entered the collection in 1865, while his Benois Madonna arrived only in 1914, bought from the Benois family.

    More about Hermitage Museum →

28. 28 Haydarpaşa railway station

    Turkey · 4.4 km from Istanbul40.996° N 29.019° E

    

    The ground here was soft shoreline, and the station rests on 1,100 wooden piles, each 21 metres long, driven into the soft shore by a steam hammer. The façades are faced with Hereke–Lefke stone, and inside, the passenger halls were lit by stained glass.

    Did you know? From here the Taurus Express ran 2,566 km to Baghdad from 1940, and from 1965 the Trans-Asia Express covered 3,059 km to Tehran.

    More about Haydarpaşa railway station →

29. 29 Haseki Hürrem Sultan Hamamı

    Haseki Hamamı

    Turkey · 1.2 km from Istanbul41.007° N 28.979° E

    

    Sinan made it a long, disciplined composition some 75 metres from end to end. Like other Ottoman double baths it has separate sections for men and women, but instead of placing them side by side he set them one behind the other on a single north–south axis, a layout that was new in Turkish bath architecture.

    Did you know? The men's changing hall is lit by four pointed-arch stained-glass windows, while the women's hall has three.

    More about Haseki Hürrem Sultan Hamamı →

30. 30 Museum of Islamic Art, Doha

    Qatar · 1.1 km from Doha25.295° N 51.539° E

    

    The setting is part of the design. The museum sits on an artificial peninsula near the old dhow harbour, surrounded by water on three sides, so that it reads from across the bay as a solitary sculpture against the sky. Pei chose a creamy limestone for the walls precisely because it changes through the day, pale and almost white at noon, honey-coloured in late light.

    Did you know? Among its treasures is a page of the Blue Qur'an, a ninth- or tenth-century manuscript written in gold on parchment dyed deep indigo.

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