The Most Beautiful Palaces in Asia

32 places in 17 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Dolmabahçe Palace

   Turkey · 3.3 km from Istanbul41.039° N 29.002° E

   

   The palace blends Baroque, Rococo and Neoclassical ornament with a traditional Ottoman plan. The southern wing, the selamlık, held the state rooms; the northern wing was the harem; between them lies the Ceremonial Hall under a high dome, lit by a chandelier of about 750 lamps weighing some 4.5 tonnes, reputed to be the largest crystal chandelier in the world. Gold leaf covers ceilings throughout, the collection of Bohemian and Baccarat crystal chandeliers is exceptional, and the Crystal Staircase, in the form of a double horseshoe, is built of Baccarat crystal, brass and mahogany. Floors are laid with Hereke carpets woven in the imperial workshops.

   Did you know? Its construction is reckoned to have cost about 35 tonnes of gold, roughly a quarter of the empire's yearly tax revenue.

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2. 02 Grand Palace

   Thailand · 2.5 km from Bangkok13.750° N 100.492° E

   

   Through the main Visetchaisri Gate the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, Wat Phra Kaew, opens on the left. Built in 1783, it is strictly a royal chapel rather than a monastery, since no monks live there, and it houses the famed and deeply venerated Emerald Buddha. Beyond lies the Middle Court with the ceremonial halls. The Chakri Maha Prasat Throne Hall, built under King Chulalongkorn in the 1870s–80s with the help of foreign architects, is the famous hybrid: a European Renaissance-style palace below, crowned by Thai tiled roofs and gilded spires.

   Did you know? The palace site was previously home to a Chinese community, which Rama I moved outside the city walls; that area became today's Chinatown.

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3. 03 Palace of the Shirvanshahs

   Azerbaijan · 4.1 km from Baku40.366° N 49.833° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The complex steps down the slope in terraces. On the upper level stand the two-storey palace building, organised around an octagonal domed hall, and the Divankhana, an elegant octagonal pavilion set inside an arcaded courtyard and entered through a portal of finely carved stone. Its purpose is still debated: some see it as a hall of audience or justice, others as an intended mausoleum. Lower down are the Shah's mosque with its minaret, the domed burial vault of the Shirvanshah family, the mausoleum of the court scholar Seyid Yahya Bakuvi, the remains of a bathhouse and a gate built in the reign of the Ottoman sultan Murad III.

   Did you know? An inscription in the family tomb names its architect as Muhammad Ali.

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4. 04 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. The southern half, the Outer Court, was the ceremonial stage: visitors enter through the Meridian Gate, cross a stream by one of five marble bridges and reach three great halls on a triple white marble terrace. The Hall of Supreme Harmony, the ceremonial centre of imperial power, is the largest surviving wooden building in China.

   Did you know? Only the Hall of Supreme Harmony was allowed ten guardian figures on its roof ridge, a privilege no other building in China had.

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5. 05 Potala Palace

   People's Republic of China · 2.2 km from Lhasa29.658° N 91.117° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   What stands today began in 1645 under the Fifth Dalai Lama, and the pace of the two halves of the project tells its own story. The White Palace — the residential and administrative wing — went up remarkably fast, its exterior finished in about three years. The Red Palace, the religious heart of the complex devoted to the study of Buddhism and to the funerary stupas of past Dalai Lamas, took far longer: interior work and decoration stretched across roughly 45 years. The Fifth Dalai Lama died in 1682, over a decade before the Red Palace was finished in 1694, and his regent, Desi Sangye Gyatso, kept the project moving to completion in his name.

   Did you know? The palace holds more than 1,000 rooms, some 10,000 shrines and around 200,000 statues.

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6. 06 Imperial City of Hue

   Vietnam · 0.2 km from Huế16.469° N 107.578° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The main entrance is the Meridian Gate, Ngọ Môn, whose central passage was used by the emperor alone. Beyond it stands the Hall of Supreme Harmony, Điện Thái Hòa, the throne hall where coronations and court audiences took place. It was first built in 1805 and moved to its present position in 1833; inside, ironwood timbers, gilded plaques and panels inlaid with 197 paired poems and paintings give a sense of the court's refinement. In front of the Thế Miếu dynastic temple stand the Nine Dynastic Urns, bronze cauldrons cast on Minh Mạng's orders in 1835–1837, each named for an emperor and decorated with scenes of Vietnam's rivers, mountains, animals and products. They survived the wars intact.

   Did you know? The citadel ramparts stand about 6.6 metres high and are roughly 21 metres thick, laid out in a zigzag pattern following Vauban's principles.

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7. 07 Yonghe Temple

   People's Republic of China · 5.2 km from Beijing39.947° N 116.411° E

   

   The compound began life not as a temple but as a prince's house. Work started in 1694 on a mansion for Yinzhen, the fourth son of the Kangxi Emperor, and the boy who would become the Qianlong Emperor was born here in 1711. When Yinzhen took the throne in 1722 as the Yongzheng Emperor, his old home was raised to the rank of a palace. His son later handed it over to Tibetan Buddhism: in 1744 Qianlong turned the palace into a lamasery, gave its roofs the yellow tiles reserved for the emperor, and filled it with monks from Tibet and Mongolia.

   Did you know? Guinness World Records lists the Maitreya as the tallest statue carved from a single piece of wood.

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8. 08 Hawa Mahal

   India · 1.9 km from Jaipur26.924° N 75.827° E

   

   The façade is a honeycomb of 953 small windows, the jharokhas, set in projecting semi-octagonal bays and pierced with carved sandstone lattices, some of them in wood. The upper three floors are only one room deep, and the building narrows to a pyramid at the top, crowned by small domes and finials. The red and pink sandstone matches the colour that gives Jaipur its name of the Pink City. The details combine Rajput forms, domed canopies, fluted pillars and lotus motifs, with the Mughal love of stone filigree and arched openings. The lattices also served a practical end: breezes forced through the tiny openings cooled the rooms behind, and fountains in the chambers added to the effect.

   Did you know? The king reportedly took the idea from the Khetri Mahal, a wind palace built earlier in the Shekhawati town of Jhunjhunu.

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9. 09 Beiteddine Palace

   Lebanon · 15.8 km from Baabda33.696° N 35.580° E

   

   The plan follows the traditional division of a great house. A vast outer courtyard, about 107 by 45 metres, was the public space where visitors and petitioners gathered, flanked by the two-storey guest wing. Beyond it lies the central palace with its reception rooms, and behind that the private family quarters, the harem, with its own courtyard and a bathhouse. The interiors are known for ceilings and panels of carved and painted cedar wood with Arabic calligraphy, marble inlay, mosaics and fountains, and the building also shows clear Italian influence in its details.

   Did you know? The palace's old stables, which once housed the emir's riders and horses, now display Byzantine floor mosaics dated by their Greek inscriptions to the 5th and 6th centuries.

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10. 10 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. Beyond the Gate of Felicity lies the inner palace, and beyond that the gardens and pavilions of the fourth court, including the Baghdad and Yerevan kiosks raised to celebrate military campaigns. Their walls are sheathed in Iznik tiles of blue, turquoise and green, the finest decoration in the palace.

    Did you know? It was originally called simply the New Palace; the name Topkapı, meaning Cannon Gate, was taken over centuries later from a seaside palace lost to fire.

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11. 11 Ali Qapu

    Iran · 5.4 km from Isfahan32.657° N 51.677° E

    

    From the square the palace reads as a tall block of six storeys, about 48 metres high, fronted by a deep raised veranda, the talar. Its flat wooden ceiling rests on eighteen slender wooden columns, and from here the shahs watched polo, parades and horse races on the ground below, and on the top floor they held receptions and banquets. The talar was a later addition to a building that grew in several stages, which is why the interior feels like a stack of distinct rooms rather than a single plan.

    Did you know? The building began as a modest two-storey gatehouse about 20 by 19 metres and 13 metres high, then grew in six stages over roughly 70 years.

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12. 12 Golestan Palace

    Iran · 0.7 km from Tehran35.680° N 51.420° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    What makes Golestan unforgettable is the way Persian craft meets nineteenth-century Europe. The courtyard facades are sheathed in painted glazed tiles, and the interiors glitter with ayeneh-kari, the Iranian technique of setting thousands of small mirror fragments into faceted vaults so that a room dissolves into light. The Mirror Hall is the famous example, a room the court painter Kamal-ol-Molk made the subject of one of his best-known works. Elsewhere the Windcatcher Mansion, built under Fath-Ali Shah and reworked under Naser al-Din Shah, keeps its tall tiled towers that once pulled air down into the rooms below.

    Did you know? The marble gravestone of Naser al-Din Shah, carved with his full-length effigy after his assassination in 1896, now lies in the Karim Khani nook.

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13. 13 Peterhof Grand Palace

    Russia · 37.2 km from Gatchina59.885° N 29.909° E

    

    Inside, the sequence of rooms runs from Petrine restraint to Rastrelli's gilt and Catherine the Great's taste. The Chesme Hall is hung with twelve large canvases of the Russian naval victory over the Ottoman fleet at Chesma, painted in 1771–1773; the Chinese cabinets of the 1760s are lined with lacquer panels and painted landscapes; and one room, the Cabinet of Fashions and Graces, has its walls covered with 368 portraits of young women by Pietro Rotari, bought from the painter's widow in 1764 and fitted edge to edge like a tapestry of faces.

    Did you know? The Throne Hall, about 330 square metres, is the largest room; its main painting shows Catherine the Great riding her horse Brilliant during the 1762 coup.

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14. 14 Gyeongbokgung

    South Korea · 2.3 km from Seoul37.580° N 126.977° E

    

    Its history since has been one of repeated loss. During the Japanese invasions of 1592 the palace burned to the ground and lay in ruins for about 270 years, until the regent of King Gojong ordered its rebuilding in 1865; by 1888 it held around 500 buildings, and in 1887 it received the first electric light in Korea. In 1895 Queen Min was assassinated by Japanese agents at Geoncheonggung, a residence within the palace grounds. Under colonial rule Japan dismantled the palace systematically, selling buildings off and planting the massive Government-General building in front of the throne hall; by 1945 only about 40 pre-colonial structures remained.

    Did you know? Gyeonghoeru was designed as a cosmic diagram: its layout encodes numbers standing for heaven, earth and man, the eight trigrams, the twelve months and the 24 solar terms.

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15. 15 Summer Palace, Beijing

    People's Republic of China · 15.1 km from Beijing39.998° N 116.269° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The gardens were laid out from around 1749 by the Qianlong Emperor, who dedicated them to his mother's sixtieth birthday and named them the Garden of Clear Ripples; they were completed in 1764 at enormous cost. In 1860, during the Second Opium War, British and French troops sacked and burned both this garden and the neighbouring Old Summer Palace. The Empress Dowager Cixi rebuilt the complex from the 1880s and made it her own residence and retreat, and it received its present name, Yiheyuan, the Garden of Preserving Harmony, in 1888. Much of what visitors see today, including the painted galleries, is her reconstruction on Qianlong's plan.

    Did you know? Kunming Lake began as a reservoir created around 1271 under the Yuan dynasty to secure Beijing's water supply.

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16. 16 Catherine Palace, Tsarskoye Selo

    Russia · 25.5 km from Saint Petersburg59.716° N 30.396° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Rastrelli's interiors are laid out as an enfilade of state rooms, and the Great Hall is its climax: about 1,000 square metres of parquet, mirrors and gilded carving, lit in the evening by 696 lamps on about a dozen chandeliers set against the mirrors, so that the room seems to dissolve into light. Catherine the Great later brought in the Scottish architect Charles Cameron and others to refit parts of the palace in a cooler Neoclassical taste, and the contrast between the two eras — Elizabeth's gold and Catherine's restrained elegance — is part of the pleasure of walking through.

    Did you know? The estate began as a farm called Saari Mojs, 'high place', on a 65-metre hill, and its Russian name Sarskoye Selo later became Tsarskoye Selo, the Tsar's Village.

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17. 17 Palace of Shaki Khans

    Azerbaijan · 2.6 km from Shaki41.204° N 47.198° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The building is only about 32 metres long and 8.5 metres deep, set among old plane trees in front of a pool. Its fame rests on decoration of an intensity rarely found in so compact a space. Much of the main facade is a screen of shebeke — small pieces of coloured glass set into a lattice of carved wood that is assembled without nails or glue. The iwans that open into the central halls are crowned by muqarnas hoods, gilded on the ground floor and set with mirror fragments on the upper floor, and the rest of the exterior is covered with floral tile panels in dark blue, turquoise and ochre.

    Did you know? The palace murals were painted in tempera, and some take their inspiration from the poems of the medieval poet Nizami Ganjavi.

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18. 18 Changdeokgung

    South Korea · 1.4 km from Seoul37.579° N 126.992° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The approach follows an old Chinese scheme of three gates and three courts, moving from public to private. Donhwamun, the main gate, first completed in 1412 and rebuilt after the Imjin War, is the oldest surviving gate of any Joseon palace. Just inside, the Geumcheongyo bridge of 1411, the oldest palace bridge of its kind, crosses a now-dry stream on two stone arches guarded by carved mythical beasts, a turtle-snake on one side and a xiezhi on each corner post. Beyond lie the throne hall, Injeongjeon, and the council hall Seonjeongjeon, the only surviving Joseon palace building roofed in blue glazed tiles, which were once a costly luxury.

    Did you know? Unlike Gyeongbokgung, laid out on a south-north axis, Changdeokgung runs from west to east, adapting its plan to the hills around it.

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19. 19 Lake Palace

    India · 5.7 km from Udaipur24.575° N 73.680° E

    

    For generations the rulers of Mewar used it as a place to escape the heat and the formality of the City Palace on the shore. Courtyards lined with columns, fountains and gardens held their summer durbars; inside, walls of black and white marble were set with coloured stones and ornamental niches, and a circular upper room some 21 feet across was paved in black and white marble under a dome. During the uprising of 1857 Maharana Swaroop Singh sheltered European families fleeing from Nimach on the island, destroying the town's boats so that no one could follow them.

    Did you know? The foundation stone was laid on 4 May 1743, and the palace was finished in 1746 under the name Jag Niwas.

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20. 20 Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban

    Bangladesh · 5 km from Dhaka23.762° N 90.379° E

    

    The project began when Dhaka was the capital of East Pakistan. In 1959 the military ruler Ayub Khan made the city Pakistan's second capital and decided to build a seat for the national assembly there. The Bengali architect Muzharul Islam advised bringing in a leading international designer; after Alvar Aalto and Le Corbusier proved unavailable, he recruited Kahn, his former teacher at Yale. Kahn presented a first design in 1960 and construction began in 1964. Work stopped during the 1971 Liberation War, and in 1974 the government of independent Bangladesh chose to complete the building to the original design.

    Did you know? The eight outer blocks rise to about 110 feet, while the central octagon holding the assembly chamber reaches about 155 feet.

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21. 21 Chehel Sotun

    Iran · 5.5 km from Isfahan32.657° N 51.672° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The name hides a pleasant riddle. The tall entrance porch stands on twenty slender wooden columns, each made from a single plane-tree trunk, and when they are reflected in the long pool in front of the pavilion the twenty become forty. In Persian, forty also simply means "many". The porch ceiling is framed in delicate geometric woodwork, the mirror-work of the recessed hall glitters behind it, and stone lions at the corners of a central basin once spouted water. Part of the mirror-work took the place of earlier paintings after the palace was damaged by fire.

    Did you know? The reflecting pool in front of the pavilion is about 115 metres long and some 16 metres wide.

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22. 22 Taq Kasra (Arch of Ctesiphon)

    Iraq · 32.5 km from Baghdad33.094° N 44.581° E

    

    The arch opened onto a throne room about 24 by 48 metres and more than 30 metres high. Who built it remains debated: some historians credit Shapur I in the 3rd century, others Khosrow I after his campaign against Byzantium in 540, and medieval writers named at least four different Sasanian rulers as its builder. Ctesiphon itself, on the eastern bank of the Tigris, grew from a Parthian military camp founded around 120 BC into an imperial capital, merging with Hellenistic Seleucia across the river into a metropolis of about 30 square kilometres.

    Did you know? Dahl's photograph of the arch was later sold at auction by his family for £6,000 to support the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre.

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23. 23 City Palace, Udaipur

    India · 5.5 km from Udaipur24.576° N 73.683° E

    

    The story begins in 1559, when Maharana Udai Singh II chose this lakeside ridge for a new capital after leaving the old hill fortress of Chittorgarh. Udaipur, the city that grew around his palace, became the seat of Mewar, and some twenty-two generations of his successors added their own courts and wings. The result is not one design but a chain of palaces linked by narrow stairs and corridors, in a blend of Rajput and Mughal forms — cusped arches, jharokha balconies, small domed pavilions — built in granite and marble and finished inside with mirror-work, inlay, silver and paintings.

    Did you know? According to tradition, a hermit met on a hunt advised Udai Singh II to build here, and his first courtyard, the Rai Angan, marks the spot.

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24. 24 Mysore Palace

    India · 1 km from Mysore12.304° N 76.654° E

    

    Irwin's palace is a showpiece of the Indo-Saracenic style, mixing Hindu, Islamic, Rajput and Gothic elements in grey granite, with deep pink marble domes on its corner towers and a five-storey central tower capped by a gilded dome. The interiors are richer still. The Durbar Hall, the public audience hall, is a long colonnade of carved granite pillars with paintings of Hindu deities, and the octagonal marriage pavilion, the Kalyana Mantapa, is roofed with a stained-glass dome in peacock patterns, carried on cast-iron columns made in Scotland. The golden throne and the golden howdah, carried in procession during the festival, are among the palace's treasures.

    Did you know? The golden howdah weighs about 750 kilograms and carries the image of the goddess Chamundeshwari through the city in the Dasara procession.

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25. 25 Dar al-Hajar

    Yemen · 12.7 km from Sanaa15.441° N 44.125° E

    

    The site has a long and layered history, and the accounts of it vary. Tradition holds that an ancient fortress stood on the rock long before Islam. The present palace is usually traced to the late eighteenth century, when Imam al-Mansur Ali bin Abbas had his minister Ali bin Saleh al-Amari, a scholar known for his learning in architecture, astronomy and poetry, build him a summer residence here around 1786. In the twentieth century Imam Yahya Muhammad Hamid ed-Din, who ruled from 1904 to 1948, restored it as his own summer retreat around 1920, adding upper floors and the mafraj, the reception room at the top of a Yemeni house where guests gather.

    Did you know? Above the door of the small mosque beside the palace, Imam Yahya carved a dedication to God in his regnal name, al-Mutawakkil ala Allah, still visible today.

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26. 26 Hisham's Palace

    Palestine · 24.1 km from Ramallah31.882° N 35.460° E

    

    The complex was raised between about 724 and 743, in the last decades of the Umayyad caliphate. Tradition attaches it to Caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, whose name it carries, although some scholars argue for his nephew al-Walid II. It is a classic desert qasr, spread over some 60 hectares and made up of three parts: a two-storey palace on a square plan with round towers at the corners, the bath hall of about 827 square metres, and a walled agricultural estate.

    Did you know? In 2021 the mosaic was put on permanent view beneath a new protective shelter funded by Japan, in a project costing about 12 million US dollars.

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27. 27 Qusayr 'Amra

    Jordan31.802° N 36.587° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The walls and vaults of the audience hall and the baths are covered in frescoes of remarkable freedom. There are hunting scenes and feasts, bathing women, the earliest known depictions in Islamic art of Jonah and the whale, and a scene of rulers — among them the Byzantine emperor, the Visigothic king Roderic, the Sasanian shah and the Negus of Ethiopia — often read as a statement of the Umayyads' place among the powers of the world. The baths follow the Roman pattern of changing room, warm room and hot room; in the dome of the hot room is painted the sky, with the zodiac and some 35 constellations — the earliest known depiction of the night sky on a curved rather than flat surface.

    Did you know? Al-Walid is said to have once been entertained by performers dressed as stars and constellations, a possible link to the painted dome.

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28. 28 Qasr Al Watan

    United Arab Emirates · 6.2 km from Abu Dhabi24.462° N 54.306° E

    

    The heart of the palace is the Great Hall beneath that dome, a vast space where every surface is worked: white and gold geometry climbing into the cupola and light falling through patterned openings onto polished floors. Around it the building divides by purpose. The eastern wing, the House of Knowledge, keeps manuscripts, diplomatic gifts and a library of more than 50,000 volumes on the history and culture of the region; the western wing, the Spirit of Collaboration, is the chamber where the Federal Supreme Council, the Cabinet and visiting delegations actually meet. The sense of walking through rooms that are still in official use is part of the appeal.

    Did you know? The Spirit of Collaboration chamber is round so that every delegate at the table can see the others, a layout meant to put all participants on equal footing.

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29. 29 Jahangir Mahal, Orchha

    India · 14.3 km from Jhansi25.351° N 78.644° E

    

    The building is a great square block arranged symmetrically around a central courtyard, rising in several storeys of terraces, hanging balconies, porches and apartments. Its roofline is crowned by eight large domes and numerous smaller domed pavilions (chhatris), and the whole composition blends Rajput and Mughal elements: the domes follow the Timurid tradition favoured by the Mughals, while the balconies and porches recall the Rajput palace tradition. The entrance gateways are scaled to allow elephants to pass through, and traces of turquoise glazed tilework still survive on the east front.

    Did you know? For all its size and splendour, the palace is said to have hosted Jahangir for just a single night.

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30. 30 Katsura Imperial Villa

    Japan · 6.4 km from Kyoto34.984° N 135.709° E

    

    The buildings are in the sukiya manner, an informal, refined style that grew out of the architecture of the tea ceremony. The Old Shoin of around 1616, the Middle Shoin and the New Palace, added around 1663 for a visit by the retired Emperor Go-Mizunoo, are linked in a staggered diagonal line, a so-called flying-geese arrangement that lets each room open onto its own view of the garden. Everything is built to the module of the tatami mat, with plain unpainted timber, paper screens and slender posts, and the decoration is reserved for small details such as the shelves, the metal door-pulls and the patterned papers.

    Did you know? On parting, Hideyoshi granted Toshihito lands yielding 3,000 koku of rice, enough to found a new princely house, the Hachijō-no-miya.

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