The Most Beautiful Churches Seen on Screen in Europe

21 places in 7 countries · updated 6 October 2026

1. 01 San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane

   Chiesa di San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane

   Italy · 0.9 km from Rome41.902° N 12.491° E

   

   San Carlo is so small that it would get lost in most Roman churches: the whole building measures only about 20 by 12 metres. Yet into that cramped corner plot Francesco Borromini fitted one of the most inventive spaces of the Baroque, and it was his first independent commission.

   Did you know? Romans call it San Carlino, and its whole floor area is often said to fit inside one of the four piers that carry the dome of St Peter's.

   More about San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane →

2. 02 St. Vitus Cathedral

   Katedrála svatého Víta v Praze

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

   

   St Vitus Cathedral, formally dedicated to Saints Vitus, Wenceslaus and Adalbert, is the seat of the Archbishop of Prague and the largest and most important church in the Czech Republic. 8 m high, and holds the tombs of Bohemian kings and Holy Roman emperors. It is the third church on the spot: Duke Wenceslaus founded a rotunda here around 930, after obtaining a relic of St Vitus, and a Romanesque basilica followed.

   Did you know? The Zikmund bell in the great south tower, cast by Tomáš Jaroš in 1549, weighs about 16.5 tonnes and is the largest bell in the Czech Republic.

   More about St. Vitus Cathedral →

3. 03 Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg

   Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg

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

   

   Strasbourg's cathedral is a building of one tower, and that asymmetry is its signature. The west front was begun in 1277, with Erwin von Steinbach credited as master builder until his death in 1318, and it was planned with two spires. Only the north one was ever built: an octagonal tower and openwork spire by Ulrich Ensingen and Johannes Hültz, finished in 1439.

   Did you know? In 1794 radical revolutionaries planned to pull down the spire as an insult to equality; citizens saved it by crowning it with a giant tin Phrygian cap.

   More about Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg →

4. 04 Lincoln Cathedral

   United Kingdom53.234° N 0.536° W

   

   The Victorian critic John Ruskin thought Lincoln Cathedral the most precious piece of architecture in the British Isles, worth any two other English cathedrals, and on its ridge above the flat Lincolnshire countryside it is easy to see why he said it. The first cathedral was begun in 1072 by the Norman bishop Remigius and consecrated in 1092.

   Did you know? The cathedral stood in for Westminster Abbey in The Da Vinci Code after the abbey refused filming, and for Notre-Dame in Ridley Scott's Napoleon (2023).

   More about Lincoln Cathedral →

5. 05 Nidaros Cathedral

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

   

   Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim is the northernmost medieval cathedral in the world and the national shrine of Norway. It stands over the burial place of King Olav II Haraldsson, who fell at the Battle of Stiklestad in 1030 and was soon venerated as Saint Olav, the patron of Norway.

   Did you know? Only five medieval statues survived on the west front; rebuilding its sculpture took from 1905 to 1983 and involved a long line of sculptors.

   More about Nidaros Cathedral →

6. 06 St Paul's Cathedral

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

   

   St Paul's Cathedral is Sir Christopher Wren's masterpiece and the building that gave London its skyline for three centuries. Its dome, rising 111 metres to the cross on Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the City of London, was the tallest thing in London from 1710 to 1963.

   Did you know? The rebuilding was paid for largely by a special tax levied on coal arriving in London, not from the royal purse.

   More about St Paul's Cathedral →

7. 07 Canterbury Cathedral

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

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Canterbury Cathedral is the mother church of the Church of England and of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Augustine, sent from Rome by Pope Gregory the Great to convert the Anglo-Saxons, founded it in 597.

   Did you know? Henry VIII reputedly summoned the dead Becket on a charge of treason; when he failed to appear, his shrine's treasures were carted off in two chests and 26 carts.

   More about Canterbury Cathedral →

8. 08 Notre-Dame de Paris

   Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris

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

   

   Bishop Maurice de Sully tore down the older cathedral on the Île de la Cité around 1160 and started again at a far larger scale. The first stone was laid in the spring of 1163, in the presence of King Louis VII and Pope Alexander III, and the high altar was consecrated in 1182.

   Did you know? Napoleon crowned himself Emperor inside the cathedral on 2 December 1804.

   More about Notre-Dame de Paris →

9. 09 Gloucester Cathedral

   United Kingdom51.867° N 2.247° W

   

   Gloucester Cathedral is best understood as two buildings wearing one skin. The heavy Norman church begun by Abbot Serlo in 1089 still stands underneath — you feel it in the squat round piers of the nave — but in the fourteenth century the monks wrapped its eastern half in a lattice of tall, thin Perpendicular tracery, as if a stone cage had been lowered over the Romanesque walls.

   Did you know? The church began as a minster founded around 679 by Osric, King of the Hwicce, with his relative Kyneburg as its first abbess.

   More about Gloucester Cathedral →

10. 10 Basilica of Saint-Denis

    Basilique Saint-Denis

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

    

    On the northern edge of Paris, in the town of Saint-Denis, stands the church where Gothic architecture was invented. Abbot Suger, adviser to Louis VI and Louis VII, rebuilt the old abbey church from about 1135, first with a new west front and then with a choir completed in 1144 that combined pointed arches, rib vaults and walls opened up for large windows into a new, light-filled whole.

    Did you know? In 2004 the mummified heart of the boy who would have been Louis XVII, confirmed by DNA testing, was sealed in a crystal vase in the crypt.

    More about Basilica of Saint-Denis →

11. 11 Salisbury Cathedral

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

    

    Salisbury Cathedral was built in one go, which is rare for an English cathedral and is what gives it its calm. The foundation stones were laid in 1220 on open meadows by the rivers, after the clergy abandoned the cramped hilltop of Old Sarum a couple of miles to the north, and the nave, transepts and choir were complete by 1258. Only the cloister, the chapter house and, by 1330, the tower and spire were added later.

    Did you know? Because the water table beneath the meadows is so high, the cathedral rests on foundations only about four feet (1.2 m) deep.

    More about Salisbury Cathedral →

12. 12 St Mark's Basilica

    Basilica di San Marco

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

    

    St Mark's is not a cathedral that grew out of a bishop's church; it was the private chapel of the Doge and the state sanctuary of the Venetian Republic, and it became the city's cathedral only in 1807. It was built to house the body of St Mark, which, according to medieval chronicles, two Venetian merchants took from Alexandria in 828.

    Did you know? According to tradition, the merchants smuggled St Mark's body out of Alexandria hidden under pork, which Muslim customs officials would not touch.

    More about St Mark's Basilica →

13. 13 León Cathedral

    Catedral de Santa María de Regla de León

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

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    León's cathedral, Santa María de Regla, is the Spanish cathedral that went furthest in the Gothic dream of replacing walls with light. It has around 125 windows and about 1,800 square metres of stained glass, most of it made between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, one of the largest collections of medieval glass anywhere.

    Did you know? For centuries a dried hide over a door was said to be a mole that wrecked the builders' work by night; in the 1990s it proved a leatherback turtle shell.

    More about León Cathedral →

14. 14 Notre-Dame de Chartres

    Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres

    France48.448° N 1.488° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Chartres Cathedral stands in the old capital of the Beauce, about 80 km southwest of Paris, and it is one of the most complete and influential Gothic cathedrals in Europe. At least five churches stood on this site before it. On the night of 10 June 1194 fire destroyed most of the Romanesque cathedral, sparing only the crypt, the west towers and the west front.

    Did you know? The stone screen around the choir holds about 200 statues arranged in 41 scenes from the lives of Christ and the Virgin.

    More about Notre-Dame de Chartres →

15. 15 Wells Cathedral

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

    

    Wells is a small market city, and its cathedral is out of all proportion to it. Begun around 1175, it was designed from the start in the new pointed style, and the architectural historian John Harvey called it the first truly Gothic building in Europe. It became a cathedral in the thirteenth century after a long tug-of-war between Wells, Bath and Glastonbury, which is why the bishop is still "of Bath and Wells".

    Did you know? The west front is about 45 metres wide and 30 metres high.

    More about Wells Cathedral →

16. 16 Cologne Cathedral

    Kölner Dom

    Germany · 1.3 km from Cologne50.941° N 6.958° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden laid the foundation stone on 15 August 1248, and the building he began was meant for one purpose above all: to house the relics of the Three Magi, which Archbishop Rainald of Dassel had brought from Milan in 1164 as spoils of Frederick Barbarossa's war. The ground plan and the proportions of the nave follow Amiens closely.

    Did you know? On 6 March 1945 American tanks fought a German Panther in the square beside the cathedral, a duel caught on film.

    More about Cologne Cathedral →

17. 17 Westminster Abbey

    United Kingdom · 0.7 km from London51.499° N 0.127° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Westminster Abbey, formally the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, has been the setting of English and British coronations since 1066: forty monarchs have been crowned here, eighteen are buried here, and at least sixteen royal weddings have taken place since 1100. The site began as a Benedictine monastery founded around 959 on Thorney Island, then an island in the Thames.

    Did you know? David Hockney designed a 2018 window celebrating Elizabeth II, a blossoming Yorkshire hawthorn scene, on an iPad to mimic light passing through glass.

    More about Westminster Abbey →

18. 18 Ely Cathedral

    United Kingdom · 24.2 km from Cambridge52.399° N 0.264° E

    

    Ely Cathedral is called the Ship of the Fens, and on the flat land of Cambridgeshire you understand why: its towers are visible for miles across the drained fields, riding above the little city like a hull on water. It began as an abbey founded in 672 by St Etheldreda, an East Anglian princess, whose shrine drew pilgrims for centuries.

    Did you know? Its stone came from Barnack quarries owned by Peterborough Abbey, reportedly paid for with 8,000 eels a year.

    More about Ely Cathedral →

19. 19 Sacré-Cœur

    Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre

    France · 3.3 km from Paris48.887° N 2.343° E

    

    Seen from almost anywhere in Paris, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart is the white shape on the skyline at the top of Montmartre, the city's highest hill.

    Did you know? The Savoyarde bell, a gift from the four dioceses of Savoy, was hauled up to Montmartre in October 1895 by a team of 28 horses.

    More about Sacré-Cœur →

20. 20 Basilica of San Isidoro, León

    Basílica de San Isidoro de León

    Spain · 2.3 km from León42.601° N 5.571° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Beneath the Basilica of San Isidoro in León lies one of the best-preserved painted interiors of the Romanesque age.

    Did you know? The Royal Pantheon is so richly painted that it is often nicknamed the Sistine Chapel of Romanesque art.

    More about Basilica of San Isidoro, León →

21. 21 Durham Cathedral

    United Kingdom · 24.2 km from Newcastle upon Tyne54.773° N 1.576° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Durham Cathedral stands on a wooded rock almost enclosed by a loop of the River Wear, sharing the peninsula with the castle of the prince-bishops. It was built largely between 1093 and 1133, and UNESCO, listing cathedral and castle together in 1986, called it the largest and most perfect monument of the Norman style in England.

    Did you know? Scenes for the first two Harry Potter films were shot here, and the cathedral also appears in Avengers: Endgame.

    More about Durham Cathedral →