The Most Beautiful Cathedrals in Europe

65 places in 18 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Milan Cathedral

   Duomo di Milano

   Italy · 1.3 km from Milan45.464° N 9.191° E

   

   The design was argued over for generations. The first master builder planned a Lombard brick church, but Visconti wanted the latest northern Gothic, and French and German engineers were brought in to advise; at the end of the 1390s one of them, Jean Mignot, declared that the Lombard masons were building without science and that the whole thing risked collapse. It did not collapse. The result is the most northern-looking of the great Italian churches: five aisles divided by 40 pillars, a nave rising about 45 metres, and vast apse windows.

   Did you know? By Milanese tradition no building should stand higher than the Madonnina, so copies of her were placed on top of the taller Pirelli Tower, Palazzo Lombardia and Isozaki Tower.

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2. 02 Wawel Cathedral

   Bazylika Archikatedralna św. Stanisława i św. Wacława w Krakowie

   Poland · 1.8 km from Kraków50.055° N 19.935° E

   

   Three things stand out. The first is Sigismund's Chapel on the south side, with its gilded dome, built between 1517 and 1533 by the Florentine Bartolommeo Berrecci for King Sigismund the Old and often called the purest piece of Italian Renaissance architecture north of the Alps; beside it stands the later Vasa Chapel. The second is the Sigismund Bell, installed in 1521, nearly 13 tonnes of bronze that rings only on great national and church occasions; visitors can climb the tower to see it. The third is the silver coffin of Saint Stanislaus, the national patron, beneath a black marble canopy over the high altar, made in 1669–71 after the Swedes looted its predecessor.

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3. 03 Bamberg Cathedral

   Bamberger Dom

   Germany49.891° N 10.883° E

   

   It holds several things found nowhere else. Henry II and his wife Cunigunde are the only imperial couple ever canonised, and they lie in a marble tomb carved by Tilman Riemenschneider between 1499 and 1513, In the west choir is the tomb of Pope Clement II, who had been bishop of Bamberg: the only papal grave in Germany and north of the Alps. And in the nave stands the Bamberg Horseman, a stone equestrian figure of around 1225–1237, probably the first equestrian statue of its kind since antiquity; nobody knows whom it portrays, though Stephen of Hungary is one candidate.

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4. 04 St. Stephen's Cathedral

   Stephansdom

   Austria · 1 km from Vienna48.208° N 16.373° E

   

   The south tower took 65 years to build, from 1368 to 1433, and served as the city's observation post during the Ottoman sieges of 1529 and 1683. Its northern twin was abandoned in 1511 at 68 metres and capped in 1578 with a Renaissance top. It now holds the Pummerin, a bell of 20,130 kilograms, the largest in Austria. The most famous feature, though, is the roof: 111 metres long and covered with 230,000 glazed tiles laid in zigzags, with the Habsburg double-headed eagle picked out above the choir on the south side and the arms of the city and the republic on the north.

   Did you know? The original Pummerin, cast in 1705, was made partly from nearly 300 cannons captured from the Ottoman besiegers of 1683.

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5. 05 St. Vitus Cathedral

   Katedrála svatého Víta v Praze

   Czech Republic · 1.7 km from Prague50.091° N 14.401° E

   

   The Gothic cathedral was begun on 21 November 1344, when Prague became an archbishopric, and was driven by Charles IV, who wanted a coronation church, a royal burial place and a shrine for St Wenceslaus. The first architect, Matthias of Arras, came from the papal palace at Avignon and built in a strict French manner; after his death in 1352 the 23-year-old Peter Parler took over and changed Gothic architecture with his net vaults of doubled diagonal ribs, his inventive window tracery and the portrait busts in the triforium, which include himself.

   Did you know? Ringing Zikmund takes six people: four to swing the bell and two to handle its clapper.

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6. 06 Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg

   Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg

   France · 0.2 km from Strasbourg48.582° N 7.751° E

   

   Stand in front of the west facade first. It is a screen of stone strings, slender columns and gables laid over the wall behind, with three portals below, the right one showing the Last Judgement with the wise and foolish virgins, and a rayonnant rose window 14 metres across above. Inside, the building reveals its long history: the crypt and parts of the east end are still Romanesque, while the nave is Gothic. Two works in the south transept stand out. The Pillar of the Angels, from around the 1220s, carries tiers of sculpted angels and evangelists around a single column.

   Did you know? During the Revolution, 215 statues around the portals were smashed with hammers, while the central tympanum survived under planks painted with the revolutionary motto.

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7. 07 Lincoln Cathedral

   United Kingdom53.234° N 0.536° W

   

   Between 1307 and 1311 the central tower was raised to about 83 metres. With the lead-covered timber spire that topped it until a storm brought it down in 1548, the cathedral is reputed to have been the tallest structure in the world, though the height of that spire is disputed. Today the building is the fourth largest cathedral in Britain by floor area.

   Did you know? Bishop Hugh of Wells was among the bishops named in Magna Carta, and the cathedral kept one of the four surviving 1215 originals; it is now shown in Lincoln Castle.

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8. 08 Nidaros Cathedral

   Norway · 1.5 km from Trondheim63.427° N 10.397° E

   

   The history of the building is one of fire and rebuilding. Fires in 1327 and 1531 destroyed the nave, the church burned down to its stone walls in 1708, and lightning struck again in 1719. A great restoration began in 1869 under Heinrich Ernst Schirmer and was taken up by Christian Christie; it was officially declared complete only in 2001, and the cathedral's own stonemasons' workshop still maintains it. The rebuilt west front, lined with rows of sculpted figures, is the cathedral's great show façade.

   Did you know? The north-west tower holds Norway's largest church bell, a 2,400 kg giant installed in 1964 that is said to carry about 30 km on the right wind.

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9. 09 Siena Cathedral

   Duomo di Siena

   Italy · 1.7 km from Siena43.318° N 11.329° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Inside, look down before you look up. The whole floor is a picture book of 56 inlaid marble panels made from the 14th to the 16th century by about forty artists: sibyls, Old Testament stories, Pinturicchio's Mount of Wisdom and Domenico Beccafumi's scenes of Elijah and Ahab in the choir. Most of the time the finest panels are covered for protection, and they are fully uncovered for only six to ten weeks a year, usually including September. Then the pulpit: Nicola Pisano carved it in Carrara marble between 1265 and 1268, and its crowded reliefs of the life of Christ and the Last Judgement are among the founding works of Italian Gothic sculpture.

   Did you know? The first floor panel at the entrance shows Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary father of wisdom, designed by Giovanni di Stefano in 1488.

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10. 10 St Paul's Cathedral

    United Kingdom · 1.9 km from London51.514° N 0.098° W

    

    Wren was given the commission in 1669 and worked through several designs before the foundation stone was laid in June 1675. The church was consecrated in 1697 and declared complete in 1710, a rare case of a great cathedral finished within its architect's lifetime. The style is English Baroque, and the great dome over the crossing is as much engineering as art. Wren separated the inner dome from the outer one far more than Michelangelo had done at St Peter's in Rome, and between them inserted a hidden brick cone that carries the lantern; through the oculus of the inner dome, painted by James Thornhill with scenes from the life of St Paul, you can glimpse the cone above.

    Did you know? By 1716 the total bill for the new cathedral had reached about £1.1 million, a colossal sum for the age.

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11. 11 Burgos Cathedral

    Catedral de Burgos

    Spain · 2.3 km from Burgos42.341° N 3.704° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The spires came from Juan de Colonia, a master from Cologne who seems to have known the drawings for Cologne's own towers, which were not actually built until centuries later. His family went on to shape much of what makes Burgos extraordinary: the Constable's Chapel behind the high altar, a late-Gothic funerary chapel of the Isabelline style finished with sculpture by Diego de Siloé and Felipe Bigarny, and the first lantern over the crossing. When that lantern collapsed in the sixteenth century, Juan de Vallejo raised the present one, an octagonal two-storey tower whose star-shaped ribs seem to hang in mid-air above the transept.

    Did you know? Next to the Papamoscas, a smaller figure called Martinillo strikes the quarter hours from his own balcony.

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12. 12 Canterbury Cathedral

    United Kingdom · 22.2 km from Dover51.280° N 1.083° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The event that made Canterbury one of the great pilgrim destinations of Europe happened on 29 December 1170, when four knights of King Henry II murdered Archbishop Thomas Becket in the northwest transept. Becket was quickly made a saint, and pilgrims poured in, like those of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The spot where he died, known as the Martyrdom, is marked by an altar of 1986 and a sculpture of a cross flanked by two swords by Giles Blomfield, whose shadows complete the four blades of the knights.

    Did you know? Becket's golden shrine was usually hidden under a wooden cover that was hoisted on ropes for dramatic effect once a crowd of pilgrims had gathered.

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13. 13 Notre-Dame de Paris

    Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris

    France · 0.6 km from Paris48.853° N 2.350° E

    

    The west front is the part most people know: two towers 69 metres high, built between 1220 and 1250, with the north tower visibly a little bulkier than the south. 6 metres across and entirely re-glazed in the 19th century; the south transept rose, a gift of Louis IX, is nearly 13 metres wide. Much of what gives the exterior its character is later. After the Revolution stripped the cathedral of bronze, lead and statuary and turned it briefly into a Temple of Reason, the building decayed badly enough for demolition to be discussed.

    Did you know? In 1871 Communards planned to burn the cathedral but gave up because the fire would have spread to a crowded hospital for the elderly next door.

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14. 14 Seville Cathedral

    Catedral de Santa María de la Sede de Sevilla

    Spain · 2.4 km from Seville37.386° N 5.993° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The cathedral was built on the footprint of the great Almohad mosque of the 1170s, and two parts of it survive. The minaret, begun in 1184 and modelled on the Koutoubia in Marrakesh, became the bell tower called the Giralda; in the 16th century Hernán Ruiz the Younger added a Renaissance belfry, crowned in 1568 by the bronze weathervane figure known as the Giraldillo. The tower is 104.5 metres tall and is climbed by ramps rather than stairs. The mosque's ablutions court survives as the Patio de los Naranjos, planted with orange trees and entered through the horseshoe-arched Door of Forgiveness.

    Did you know? When the minaret now called the Giralda was finished in 1198, it was crowned with four gilded bronze spheres, which were lost after an earthquake in 1365.

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15. 15 Gloucester Cathedral

    United Kingdom51.867° N 2.247° W

    

    Three things deserve most of your time. The quire, with its dense net of ribs and bosses overhead, ends in the Great East Window, which was the largest window in the world when it was finished around 1350 and still holds much of its medieval glass. Edward II's canopied tomb lies beside it. Then walk out to the Great Cloister: its fan vaults, designed in the second half of the fourteenth century, are the earliest surviving in England, and the lacy corridors are the ones film audiences know from the first, second and sixth Harry Potter films.

    Did you know? When Abbot Serlo arrived in 1072, the community had dwindled to just two monks and eight novices.

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16. 16 Otranto Cathedral

    Cattedrale di Otranto

    Italy · 37.5 km from Lecce40.146° N 18.491° E

    

    The cathedral itself was founded in 1068 by the Norman bishop William on ground that had held a Messapian village, a Roman house and an early Christian place of worship, and it was consecrated in 1088 under Pope Urban II. It mixes Byzantine, early Christian and Romanesque elements: a basilica 54 m long and 25 m wide with three aisles ending in apses, its arcades carried by granite columns, each with a different capital. Beneath the apse lies an 11th-century crypt, a small forest of more than seventy columns and pillars gathered from older buildings, with remains of frescoes from the Middle Ages to the 16th century. The coffered ceiling of black, white and gold over the nave dates from 1698.

    Did you know? Arthur appears just above a row of roundels showing the labours of the months and the signs of the zodiac, positioned over March.

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17. 17 Saint Sophia Cathedral

    Софійський собор

    Ukraine · 1.9 km from Kyiv50.453° N 30.514° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Its founding date is still argued over. The Primary Chronicle gives 1037, under Yaroslav the Wise; the Novgorod chronicle gives 1017; and the historian Nadiia Nikitenko, reading graffiti on the walls, argued for 1011 under his father Volodymyr — the date Ukraine adopted when it celebrated the millennium in 2011. What is clear is the ambition. The core was a five-aisled church about 100 feet square, crowned by thirteen domes rising in a pyramid, and built with local brick and pink Ovruch slate where Byzantine churches used marble. Yaroslav lies here in a marble sarcophagus, and a founding library of the Rus' was kept at the cathedral.

    Did you know? The mosaics were whitewashed by the early 1700s and rediscovered only in 1884 by the art historian Adrian Prakhov.

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18. 18 Basilica of Saint-Denis

    Basilique Saint-Denis

    France · 8.6 km from Paris48.936° N 2.360° E

    

    What sets Saint-Denis apart from every other church in France is its role as the royal necropolis. Almost every French king from the 10th century to the Revolution was buried here, and remains of earlier ones, Clovis among them, were brought in. The church holds the tombs of 43 kings and 32 queens, and walking among the tombs and recumbent effigies is a history of French funerary sculpture; in 1264, under Louis IX, the remains of sixteen earlier kings and queens were gathered into the new nave to make it a deliberate royal pantheon.

    Did you know? According to legend, Saint Denis walked here from Montmartre carrying his own severed head, choosing the spot where he wished to be buried.

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19. 19 Salisbury Cathedral

    United Kingdom · 37.9 km from Bournemouth51.065° N 1.798° W

    

    The spire is the landmark: at 123 metres it is the tallest in Britain, and it was an afterthought, adding thousands of tonnes to foundations never designed for it. Christopher Wren was called in during the 17th century because the crossing piers had visibly bent, and the tilt can still be seen by looking up from the crossing. A guided Tower Tour climbs 332 steps to the base of the spire, where the original medieval timber scaffolding can be seen inside the hollow stone cone and the view opens over the Close and the Wiltshire countryside.

    Did you know? Building it consumed roughly 70,000 tons of stone, 3,000 tons of timber and 450 tons of lead.

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20. 20 St Mark's Basilica

    Basilica di San Marco

    Italy · 0.6 km from Venice45.434° N 12.340° E

    

    The most famous spoils are the four gilded bronze horses from the Hippodrome of Constantinople, the only surviving team of horses from classical antiquity. The originals have been kept inside since 1974, with copies on the balcony above the central portal. On the south side, embedded in the corner of the treasury, stands the porphyry group of the Four Tetrarchs, another trophy of 1204.

    Did you know? The gold mosaics cover more than 8,000 square metres; each gold tessera is a leaf of real gold sealed between layers of glass, earning the nickname Chiesa d'Oro.

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21. 21 Speyer Cathedral

    Speyerer Dom

    Germany · 20.5 km from Mannheim49.317° N 8.443° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Henry IV's rebuild gave the building its character. A small arcaded gallery runs right around it just below the roofline, the earliest such gallery in Germany, which was copied at Worms, Mainz and across Italy. The pale green copper roofs, the four towers and the two octagonal domes stand in balance at each end. Inside, the nave is plain and massive, a series of square vaulted bays carried on alternating piers, which gives it an almost Roman gravity. Only a cycle of 19th-century paintings of the life of the Virgin survives between the windows; the rest of the Nazarene frescoes were removed in the 1950s and now hang, restored, in the Kaisersaal above the west porch.

    Did you know? Excommunicated Emperor Henry IV lay for five years in the unconsecrated Saint Afra chapel until the papal ban was lifted in 1111 and he could be buried properly.

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22. 22 Reims Cathedral

    Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Reims

    France · 0.5 km from Reims49.254° N 4.034° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    On 19 September 1914, German shelling set the cathedral's timber roof on fire, and one of the west facade's carved angels — known for its serene half-smile — lost its head in the fall of stone that followed. That single broken statue, nicknamed the Smiling Angel, was seized on by French wartime propaganda as the image of German "barbarity" against French civilisation; the pieces were recovered, stored for years, and eventually reassembled in a full restoration completed in 1926.

    Did you know? The Gallery of Kings high on the west front holds 56 statues of monarchs, each about 4.5 metres tall.

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23. 23 Modena Cathedral

    Duomo di Modena

    Italy · 0.6 km from Modena44.646° N 10.925° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The west front carries Wiligelmus's reliefs of Genesis, from the creation of Adam and Eve through the Fall to the story of Noah. They are counted among the masterpieces of Romanesque sculpture, and the figures are heavy, direct and full of feeling. The two lions at the main portal are Roman, probably dug up during the foundations and put back to work. The great rose window and other additions came in the 13th century from Anselmo da Campione and his family, the Campionese masters, which is why the façade mixes phases.

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24. 24 Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Sofia

    Свети Александър Невски

    Bulgaria · 1.9 km from Sofia42.696° N 23.333° E

    

    Pomerantsev worked in a Neo-Byzantine idiom: a cross-domed basilica whose mass steps up through a cascade of smaller domes and half-domes to a central gilded dome some 45 metres high, with a 53-metre bell tower on the west side. The building covers about 3,170 square metres and can hold around 5,000 people. Its twelve bells weigh 23 tonnes together, the largest of them about 12 tonnes. From the square the effect is of a mountain of green-copper and gold roofs; the best views come from the corners of the square, where the full stepping silhouette is visible at once.

    Did you know? The first design, drawn up by Ivan Bogomolov in 1884–1885, was reworked by Alexander Pomerantsev, whose final plan was completed only in 1898.

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25. 25 León Cathedral

    Catedral de Santa María de Regla de León

    Spain · 2.2 km from León42.599° N 5.567° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The site has been sacred and royal for a very long time. The Roman Seventh Legion built baths here, whose remains lie beneath the floor; the baths became a palace, and in the tenth century King Ordoño II gave it up for the first cathedral after a victory over the Moors; his tomb is still inside. A Romanesque church followed in the eleventh century. The present building was started around 1205, stalled over foundation problems, and resumed in 1255 under the master mason Enrique, probably a Frenchman who had worked at Burgos. Its plan follows Reims closely, on a smaller scale, which is why it is often called the most French of Spain's cathedrals.

    Did you know? The cathedral's two towers are not twins: one rises about 65 metres, the other about 68 metres.

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26. 26 Roskilde Cathedral

    Roskilde Domkirke

    Denmark · 0.8 km from Roskilde55.643° N 12.080° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The cathedral standing today was begun in the late twelfth century, under Bishop Absalon or his successor Peder Sunesen. It replaced an earlier church of travertine built around 1080. Brick-making had reached Denmark only around 1160, and Roskilde became one of the first Gothic cathedrals in Scandinavia built of brick. It helped spread Brick Gothic across northern Europe. The building marks the shift from Romanesque to the new French Gothic: the choir was consecrated in 1225, the main body was complete by about 1280, and the west towers were finished in 1405. In 1413 the body of Queen Margrethe I was moved here from Sorø, and her sarcophagus stands behind the high altar.

    Did you know? The Treaty of Roskilde between Denmark–Norway and Sweden was signed inside the cathedral itself on 26 February 1658.

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27. 27 Notre-Dame de Chartres

    Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres

    France48.448° N 1.488° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The first thing you notice is that its two west spires do not match. The south one, a plain stone pyramid about 105 m tall, was completed around 1160. The north one, rebuilt after lightning struck it in 1506, is a lace-like Flamboyant Gothic spire 113 m tall, finished in 1513 by the architect Jehan de Beauce. Between them, the Royal Portal, which survived the fire of 1194, has 12th-century column statues of the men and women of the Old Testament flanking its doors, with Christ enthroned in the central tympanum. The north and south transepts have their own sculpted porches, with hundreds more figures.

    Did you know? The floor labyrinth is about 12.9 metres across, with a path of about 261 metres winding through 11 rings.

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28. 28 Wells Cathedral

    United Kingdom · 27 km from Bristol51.210° N 2.644° W

    

    Stand on the green in front of the west front first. It holds some three hundred sculpted figures, and John Harvey rated it the supreme achievement of the combined arts in England. Inside, the first thing that stops everyone is the pair of strainer arches under the crossing: huge inverted arches inserted in 1338 by the mason William Joy when the heightened tower began to push the piers out of line. They look startlingly modern, like a pair of giant scissors across the nave.

    Did you know? It once carried around 400 statues; about 300 of them were still in place in the mid-20th century.

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29. 29 Curtea de Argeș Monastery

    Mănăstirea Curtea de Argeș

    Romania · 23.6 km from Râmnicu Vâlcea45.157° N 24.675° E

    

    The church was founded by Prince Neagoe Basarab of Wallachia: building began in 1512 and the church was consecrated in 1517. It follows a Byzantine plan, but its decoration reflects the wider influences reaching Wallachia at the time, with stone facing on the outside and a brick interior covered in frescoes. Local tradition holds that the walls kept collapsing until the master mason, Manole, agreed with his workers to immure the first woman who came to the site the next morning, and that it turned out to be his own wife. The story is told in the Romanian ballad of Meșterul Manole, Master Manole.

    Did you know? Inside, twelve columns stand for the twelve Apostles.

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30. 30 Trogir Cathedral

    Trogirska katedrala

    Croatia · 17.7 km from Split43.517° N 16.251° E

    

    The Cathedral of St Lawrence, popularly called St John's after John of Trogir, a bishop who died in 1111 and was venerated for his holy life, replaced an early Christian cathedral destroyed when Saracens sacked the town in 1123. Building started in 1213 and the main body was largely complete by 1251, so the church is essentially Romanesque: a three-aisled basilica with massive piers, three semicircular apses and cross vaults showing the influence of Apulia. Work then continued for centuries. The nave received Gothic vaulting in the 15th century, when the large vestibule and the Gothic rose window of the west front were also added.

    Did you know? Ivan Budislavić carved the Gothic oak choir stalls around 1439 to 1440, adorned with gilded figures of the apostles.

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