The Most Beautiful Places in Grand Est
8 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Grand Est are Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg, Riquewihr and Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg. The list covers 8 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Grand Est brings together Alsace, Lorraine and Champagne, the lands of north-eastern France between the Paris Basin and the Rhine. Its history is that of a borderland: Romanesque and Gothic builders worked here early, princes fortified the river frontier, and two world wars were fought across its hills. Between the Vosges and the Rhine, the Alsatian wine villages kept their half-timbered houses and a culture shaped by both French and German traditions.
Strasbourg Cathedral, built of pink sandstone from the Vosges, has a single openwork spire that made it the tallest building in the world for more than two centuries, and an astronomical clock inside. Reims Cathedral, where the kings of France were crowned for centuries, is known for its sculpted portals and the smiling angel on its façade. In Nancy, Place Stanislas, laid out in the 1750s, frames a square of honey-coloured palaces with gilded wrought-iron gates.
The Alsace villages show the region on a smaller scale. Riquewihr keeps its ramparts and painted timber-framed houses among the vineyards, and Eguisheim is built in concentric rings of lanes around its castle. Above them, the Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg stands on a spur of the Vosges, a medieval fortress rebuilt in the early twentieth century. The Rhine frontier is guarded by Vauban's octagonal Neuf-Brisach, and the Douaumont Ossuary, above the battlefield of Verdun, is one of the most solemn memorials of the First World War.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg | Cathedral | |
| 2 | Riquewihr | Most beautiful village | |
| 3 | Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg | Castle | |
| 4 | Douaumont Ossuary | War memorial | |
| 5 | Eguisheim | Most beautiful village | |
| 6 | Place Stanislas, Nancy | Square | ✓ |
| 7 | Reims Cathedral | Cathedral | ✓ |
| 8 | Fortifications of Neuf-Brisach | Star fort |
01 Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg
Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg
France · 0.2 km from Strasbourg48.582° N 7.751° E
Image by jackmac34 from Pixabay 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.
Did you know? The cathedral's first astronomical clock, installed around 1352, featured three mechanical kings who bowed before the infant Jesus at noon.
02 Riquewihr
France48.166° N 7.297° E
- one of the most beautiful villages
Jean-Pol GRANDMONT · CC BY 4.0 Riquewihr is a walled wine village that has kept the look of the sixteenth century almost intact: half-timbered houses line a main street that climbs gently to the great gate tower at the top of the village.
Did you know? Riquewihr's escape from destruction in the Second World War is credited partly to its dead-end position.
03 Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg
France48.249° N 7.344° E
Image by Efraimstochter from Pixabay Haut-Koenigsbourg stands on a sandstone spur at 757 metres in the Vosges, above the Alsace plain, and on a clear day it can be seen from as far away as Colmar. The rock was first recorded under Charlemagne.
Did you know? The Lorraine Room displays a figure of the Graoully, the dragon of Metz folklore.
04 Douaumont Ossuary
Ossuaire de Douaumont
France49.208° N 5.424° E
Image by Signalschwarz from Pixabay On the battlefield outside Verdun, a long, low building of pale stone stretches along the hillside, crowned in its centre by a tall, rounded tower.
Did you know? Nearly 4,000 engraved names of missing soldiers cover the walls and vault of the cloister, each added at the request of families or veterans' groups.
05 Eguisheim
France · 32.7 km from Mulhouse48.043° N 7.306° E
- one of the most beautiful villages
Image by Christiane13 from Pixabay Eguisheim is built in rings. Instead of a main street, the Alsatian wine village wraps itself in circles around a central square where a castle once stood, so that every lane curves back on itself and the half-timbered houses lean together in an unbroken, colourful arc.
Did you know? Carolingian documents from around 770 already mention the estate, under the name Aginesheim.
06 Place Stanislas, Nancy
France · 1.7 km from Nancy48.694° N 6.183° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Nicolas Cornet · CC BY-SA 4.0 Place Stanislas in Nancy is one of the most complete squares of the eighteenth century anywhere in Europe: an open rectangle of about 125 by 106 metres, paved in pale ochre stone with darker diagonals, framed on every side by façades of the same height and rhythm, and closed at its corners by screens of gilded wrought…
Did you know? At the 1755 inauguration a piece of plaster fell from a cornice, and fear of an assassination attempt caused a brief panic.
07 Reims Cathedral
Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Reims
France · 0.5 km from Reims49.254° N 4.034° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by DEZALB from Pixabay Reims held the coronation of the French monarchy for six centuries, from Louis VIII in 1223 to Charles X in 1825 — twenty-five coronations in total.
Did you know? According to legend, the oil used to anoint French kings came from the Holy Ampulla, a vial carried down from heaven by a dove for Clovis's baptism.
08 Fortifications of Neuf-Brisach
Place forte de Neuf-Brisach
France · 32.5 km from Mulhouse48.017° N 7.527° E
Carsten Steger · CC BY-SA 4.0 Seen from the air, Neuf-Brisach is a geometry lesson laid out in the fields of the Alsace plain: a perfect octagon of bastioned walls wrapped in a second, wider star of earthworks and moats, with a grid of straight streets and a great central square inside.
Did you know? Vauban's plan provided for some 500 houses and about 1,500 inhabitants inside the walls.
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 are the most beautiful places in Grand Est?
- On our list, Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg ranks first, followed by Riquewihr and Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg.
- Why were French kings crowned at Reims?
- The Frankish king Clovis was baptised at Reims around the end of the fifth century, and the city's cathedral became the traditional place of coronation. Almost all French kings from the Middle Ages to 1825 were crowned there.
- What is the Douaumont Ossuary?
- It is a memorial on the battlefield of Verdun that holds the bones of around 130,000 unidentified French and German soldiers killed in the 1916 battle. In front of it lies the largest French military cemetery of the First World War.
- Why is Neuf-Brisach shaped like an octagon?
- It was designed by Vauban at the end of the seventeenth century as an ideal fortified town, with bastions placed so that every stretch of wall could be covered by fire. Its regular plan made it part of the UNESCO listing of Vauban's fortifications.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Grand Est?
- In our collection, the places in Grand Est are most often churches (2), cathedrals (2), villages (2) and castles (1).
- How many places are on this list in Grand Est?
- The list covers 8 places.