The Most Beautiful Funiculars in the World
8 places in 4 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful funiculars in the world are Santa Justa Lift (Portugal), Budapest Castle Hill Funicular (Hungary) and Ascensor da Glória (Portugal). The list covers 8 funiculars in 4 countries. Portugal has the most, with 3. Last updated 13 October 2026.
A funicular is a railway that climbs by balance. Two cars tied to opposite ends of one cable pass each other halfway, the descending car helping to pull the other one up. That simple principle lets a line climb gradients no wheel on rail could manage, and it produces a distinctive kind of beauty: stepped or tilted carriages, a single straight track drawn up a slope, and a view that opens with every metre.
The section moves between city streets and Alpine walls. Lisbon contributes the Ascensor da Glória and the Ascensor da Bica, yellow cars that have climbed its hills since the 1880s and 1890s, and the Santa Justa Lift, a neo-Gothic iron tower of 1902 that is strictly an elevator rather than a funicular. Budapest's Castle Hill Funicular has run since 1870 and Hong Kong's Peak Tram since 1888. In Switzerland, the Niesenbahn runs beside the longest stairway in the world, the Gelmerbahn was built to serve a dam, and the Stoosbahn, opened in 2017, climbs gradients of up to 110 per cent in cylindrical cabins that rotate to keep passengers level.
The funiculars were chosen for how they look and are ordered by beauty. Each has its own text, a photograph credited to its author and a point on the map; the section also opens by country on separate pages.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Santa Justa Lift | Funicular | Portugal | |
| 2 | Budapest Castle Hill Funicular | Funicular | Hungary | |
| 3 | Ascensor da Glória | Funicular | Portugal | |
| 4 | Peak Tram | Funicular | People's Republic of China | |
| 5 | Ascensor da Bica | Funicular | Portugal | |
| 6 | Gelmerbahn | Funicular | Switzerland | |
| 7 | Stoosbahn (Schwyz–Stoos funicular) | Funicular | Switzerland | |
| 8 | Niesenbahn | Funicular | Switzerland |
01 Santa Justa Lift
Elevador de Santa Justa
Portugal · 1.6 km from Lisbon38.712° N 9.139° W
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0 An iron tower of filigree arches and lancet-shaped tracery rises straight out of the grid of downtown Lisbon, carrying passengers 45 metres up from the flat streets of the Baixa to the hilltop square of Largo do Carmo. The Santa Justa Lift is the last of the city's old vertical street elevators still working in its original form, and it looks less like a piece of transport infrastructure than a slender Gothic reliquary cast in metal.
Did you know? Raoul Mesnier du Ponsard also built the Bom Jesus funicular in Braga, opened in 1882, and worked on Lisbon's Glória and Bica lifts.
02 Budapest Castle Hill Funicular
Budavári sikló
Hungary · 3.2 km from Budapest47.498° N 19.039° E
Marc Ryckaert ( MJJR ) · CC BY 3.0 The Budavári Sikló climbs the flank of Castle Hill in Budapest from Clark Ádám Square, at the Buda end of the Széchenyi Chain Bridge, to Szent György Square between the Royal Palace and the Sándor Palace. The whole line is only 95 metres long and rises about 50 metres, on a gradient of roughly thirty degrees, and the ride takes about a minute and a half — just long enough for the Danube, the Chain Bridge and the Pest embankment to spread out beneath the window.
Did you know? When it opened, only Lyon had a comparable funicular, making Budapest's line the second of its kind in Europe.
03 Ascensor da Glória
Elevador da Glória
Portugal · 1 km from Lisbon38.716° N 9.143° W
rippchenmitkraut66 from Rodgau, Deutschland · CC BY 2.0 The Ascensor da Glória is one of Lisbon's signature machines: two small cars that climb and descend a steep 275 m street between the Praça dos Restauradores in the lower town and the Bairro Alto. The gradient is about 17.7 per cent, and the ride is short, but it links two different Lisbons — the grid of the rebuilt Pombaline downtown and the tangled hilltop quarter above, with the São Pedro de Alcântara garden and its viewpoint at the top.
Did you know? Its chief engineer, the Porto-born Raoul Mesnier du Ponsard, also built the Santa Justa Lift, Lisbon's Bica and Lavra funiculars and the Bom Jesus funicular in Braga.
04 Peak Tram
People's Republic of China · 4.8 km from Hong Kong22.272° N 114.155° E
LN9267 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Peak Tram has been hauling passengers up the steep north face of Hong Kong Island since May 1888, which makes it the oldest funicular railway in Asia. Its line runs about 1.4 kilometres from Garden Road in Central, near St John's Cathedral, up to Victoria Peak, climbing close to 400 metres with gradients as steep as 48 per cent. From the lower terminus to the top, the city falls away beneath the cars, and the ride offers one of the most dramatic ways to see the skyline, the harbour and Kowloon beyond open up.
Did you know? From 1908 to 1949 the two front seats were reserved for the Governor of Hong Kong under a bronze plaque, released to others only two minutes before departure.
05 Ascensor da Bica
Elevador da Bica
Portugal · 1.8 km from Lisbon38.709° N 9.147° W
BKP · CC BY-SA 3.0 Of Lisbon's old funiculars, the Bica is the one that belongs most completely to its street. One car climbs and the other descends along Rua da Bica de Duarte Belo, a narrow lane squeezed between old houses, and for some seventy metres the rails run in the roadway itself — unique among Portuguese funiculars — with only residents' cars allowed to share it. Looking up the slope from the bottom, or down it from the top, gives one of the most photographed views in Lisbon, and it is the picture that sums up the Bica quarter: steep, intimate, lived-in.
Did you know? A runaway car during the electrification trials of the 1910s smashed into the lower station on Rua de São Paulo, and the line stayed shut until 1923.
06 Gelmerbahn
Switzerland · 32.1 km from Sarnen46.614° N 8.309° E
Gzzz · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Gelmerbahn climbs a granite wall above the Grimsel Pass road at a maximum gradient of 106 per cent — steeper than 45 degrees — which makes it the steepest open funicular in Europe. Over a track of about a kilometre it gains some 448 metres, and the ride, roughly ten to twelve minutes, is made in a small open car that holds just 24 people. Passengers sit facing downhill, so the whole ascent is spent looking back into the depth of the Aare valley as it opens beneath their feet, with the rails dropping away almost vertically below. The car moves slowly, at about two metres a second, and on the steepest section it seems to hang from the rock rather than ride up it.
Did you know? Strictly speaking it is not a true funicular: a single car is hauled up and down by a winch, with no counterbalancing second car and no passing loop.
07 Stoosbahn (Schwyz–Stoos funicular)
Standseilbahn Schwyz–Stoos
Switzerland · 3.7 km from Schwyz46.991° N 8.673° E
Pakeha · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Stoosbahn climbs 744 metres in a straight line from the floor of the Muota valley to the mountain resort of Stoos, and at its steepest point the track rises 110 metres for every 100 travelled – a slope of almost 48 degrees. Since it opened in December 2017 it has been the steepest funicular in Switzerland and Europe, and it is marketed, with Guinness recognition, as the steepest in the world. The Katoomba Scenic Railway in Australia is steeper still, but that line is classed as an inclined lift rather than a funicular with two counterbalanced cars and a passing loop.
Did you know? Each car carries up to 136 passengers in four cylindrical cabins of 34 each, giving the line a capacity of about 1,500 people an hour.
08 Niesenbahn
Switzerland · 35.2 km from Bern46.639° N 7.690° E
Image by 12019 from Pixabay Seen from the shore of Lake Thun, the Niesen looks almost too regular to be real: a near-perfect cone rising above the mouth of the Kander valley, which is why the Swiss call it their pyramid. Its summit stands at 2,362 metres, and the Niesenbahn climbs almost the whole of it. Built between 1906 and 1910 and opened in July of that year, the metre-gauge funicular runs from the village of Mülenen at 693 metres to an upper station just below the top at 2,336 metres, lifting passengers more than 1,600 metres over about three and a half kilometres of track.
Did you know? With about 3,499 metres of track, the Niesenbahn ranks among the longest funiculars in the world.
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 is the steepest funicular in the world?
- The Stoosbahn in the Swiss canton of Schwyz, opened in 2017, reaches a maximum gradient of 110 per cent, making it the steepest funicular in the world. Its cabins rotate to stay level on the climb.
- What is the difference between a funicular and a cable car?
- A funicular runs on rails laid on the ground, with two counterbalanced cars attached to the same cable, while a cable car hangs from cables suspended in the air between towers.
- Which country has the most beautiful funiculars?
- In our collection, the most come from Portugal (3), Switzerland (3) and Hungary (1).
- What is the most beautiful funicular in the world?
- On our list, Santa Justa Lift (Portugal) ranks first, followed by Budapest Castle Hill Funicular (Hungary) and Ascensor da Glória (Portugal).
- How many funiculars are on this list in the world?
- The list covers 8 funiculars in 4 countries. Portugal has the most, with 3.