The Most Beautiful Places in Mandalay
7 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Mandalay are Shwezigon Pagoda, Bagan and Kuthodaw Pagoda. The list covers 7 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
The Mandalay Region lies in the dry zone of central Myanmar, along the Irrawaddy, where little rain and a broad river plain made the country's political heart for a thousand years. Pagan kings built here in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, and later dynasties moved their capitals between Ava, Amarapura and finally Mandalay itself, each leaving monasteries, pagodas and royal works in brick, teak and marble.
Bagan is the great field of that history: thousands of temples and stupas spread across a plain beside the river, built by the Pagan kings and now a World Heritage Site. Mandalay holds the late royal age. At the Kuthodaw Pagoda, King Mindon had the whole Buddhist canon carved on marble slabs, each in its own small white shrine, and the Shwenandaw Monastery, carved from teak, is the one major building to survive from the old royal palace, moved outside its walls by King Thibaw.
South of the city, at Amarapura, the U Bein Bridge crosses Taungthaman Lake on hundreds of teak posts, said to be the longest teak footbridge in the world. To the south-west, Taung Kalat rises as a sheer volcanic plug beside Mount Popa, a monastery crowning its summit and a long covered stairway climbing to it past shrines of the nats, the spirits of Burmese folk belief.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Shwezigon Pagoda | Pagoda | |
| 2 | Bagan | Archaeological site | ✓ |
| 3 | Kuthodaw Pagoda | Stupa | |
| 4 | U Bein Bridge | Bridge | |
| 5 | Shwenandaw Monastery | Monastery | |
| 6 | Shwesandaw Pagoda | Pagoda | |
| 7 | Taung Kalat | Pilgrimage site |
01 Shwezigon Pagoda
Myanmar · 25.4 km from Pakokku21.190° N 94.895° E
DIMMIS · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Shwezigon Pagoda is the golden bell that set the pattern for Burmese stupas. It stands at Nyaung-U, at the northern edge of the plain of Bagan, and was begun around 1059–1060 by King Anawrahta, founder of the Pagan kingdom, and finished under his son Kyansittha; most accounts give its completion as 1102.
02 Bagan
Myanmar · 29.5 km from Chauk21.172° N 94.860° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by LuisValiente from Pixabay On a bend of the Irrawaddy in central Myanmar, a dry plain of 104 square kilometres is studded with brick towers and gilded spires as far as the eye can see.
Did you know? Between 1904 and 1975 more than 400 earthquakes were recorded in the Bagan area, long before the quakes that toppled monuments in 1975 and 2016.
03 Kuthodaw Pagoda
Myanmar · 4.7 km from Mandalay22.005° N 96.113° E
Image by tonywuphotography from Pixabay At the foot of Mandalay Hill, a golden stupa rises above a sea of small white shrines.
Did you know? Carving began on 14 October 1860 in a large workshop shed near the royal palace, from a text checked by tiers of senior monks against palm-leaf manuscripts.
04 U Bein Bridge
Myanmar · 9.3 km from Mandalay21.892° N 96.057° E
Image by karl-ferdinand from Pixabay U Bein is less a bridge than a long line drawn across water. 2 kilometres over the shallow Taungthaman Lake beside Amarapura, a former royal capital on the southern edge of Mandalay, and it is built entirely of teak: a narrow single-lane footway carried on more than a thousand slender posts.
Did you know? Some of the original teak pillars have since been replaced with concrete ones, as rot and flooding weaken the oldest posts.
05 Shwenandaw Monastery
Myanmar · 4.5 km from Mandalay22.001° N 96.114° E
Kotraveller · CC BY-SA 3.0 Shwenandaw Monastery is a building made entirely of teak and covered, walls and roofs alike, in carving: tiers of roofs and panels crowded with scenes from Buddhist myth and figures such as the guardian spirit Lawka Nat, all worked in dark teak.
Did you know? Many of the carved scenes illustrate the Jataka tales, stories of the Buddha's previous lives, and some inside still carry traces of gilding.
06 Shwesandaw Pagoda
Myanmar · 28.6 km from Chauk21.164° N 94.866° E
Anandajoti · CC BY-SA 4.0 On the dusty plain of Bagan, where more than two thousand brick temples and stupas rise above the scrub along the Irrawaddy, the Shwesandaw stands out for its sheer bulk.
Did you know? Images of the Hindu god Ganesha once stood at the corners of its terraces, earning it the old name Ganesha Pagoda.
07 Taung Kalat
Myanmar20.913° N 95.209° E
Image by LuisValiente from Pixabay Rising abruptly from the dry plains of central Myanmar, Taung Kalat is a sheer-sided volcanic plug — the hardened throat of an old vent from the Mount Popa volcano — standing about 225 metres above its surroundings, with a gilded Buddhist monastery balanced on its crown.
Did you know? Because it is the chief centre of nat worship, Mount Popa has been called the Mount Olympus of Burma.
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 Mandalay?
- On our list, Shwezigon Pagoda ranks first, followed by Bagan and Kuthodaw Pagoda.
- Why is the Kuthodaw Pagoda called the world's largest book?
- King Mindon had the entire Tipitaka, the Theravada Buddhist canon, inscribed on 729 marble slabs, each housed in its own small stupa around the central pagoda.
- How long is the U Bein Bridge?
- The teak footbridge across Taungthaman Lake near Amarapura is about 1.2 kilometres long and was built in the mid-nineteenth century from timber of a dismantled royal palace.
- What is Mount Popa known for?
- Mount Popa is an extinct volcano regarded as the home of the nats, the spirits of Burmese folk religion; the monastery on the rock of Taung Kalat beside it is their best-known shrine.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Mandalay?
- In our collection, the places in Mandalay are most often pagodas (3), monasteries (1), pilgrimage sites (1) and bridges (1).
- How many places are on this list in Mandalay?
- The list covers 7 places.