The Most Beautiful Places in Myanmar
18 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Myanmar are Shwedagon Pagoda, Inle Lake and Shwezigon Pagoda. The list covers 18 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Myanmar's landscape is the valley of the Irrawaddy and the hills around it, and for a thousand years Theravada Buddhism has filled that ground with stupas, monasteries and cave shrines. Gilding a pagoda or carving a Buddha image is an act of merit, so the gold is renewed, the shrines multiply and even remote limestone caves fill with statues over generations.
The Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon is covered in gold and crowned with jewels, and has been the country's most sacred shrine for centuries. On the plain of Bagan, more than two thousand temples and stupas built mostly between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries stand among fields and palms. In Mandalay, Kuthodaw Pagoda surrounds its central stupa with 729 marble slabs carved with the Buddhist scriptures, often called the world's largest book, and Shwenandaw Monastery is a single building of teak covered in carving, once part of the royal palace. Across the river at Mingun, the white tiered terraces of Hsinbyume Pagoda stand for the slopes of the mythical Mount Meru.
Water and rock complete the picture. On Inle Lake, villages stand on stilts among floating gardens and fishermen row with one leg wrapped around the oar. The U Bein Bridge carries a path of teak posts across Taungthaman Lake near Amarapura. Shite-thaung Temple in Mrauk U is lined with thousands of carved images, the Pindaya Caves hold a crowd of gilded Buddhas, and the monastery of Taung Kalat sits on top of a sheer volcanic plug beside Mount Popa.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Shwedagon Pagoda | Stupa | |
| 2 | Inle Lake | Lake | |
| 3 | Shwezigon Pagoda | Pagoda | |
| 4 | Bagan | Archaeological site | ✓ |
| 5 | Kuthodaw Pagoda | Stupa | |
| 6 | U Bein Bridge | Bridge | |
| 7 | Hsinbyume Pagoda | Pagoda | |
| 8 | Shite-thaung Temple | Temple | |
| 9 | Pindaya Caves | Cave | |
| 10 | Shwenandaw Monastery | Monastery | |
| 11 | Shwesandaw Pagoda | Pagoda | |
| 12 | Phowintaung | Rock-cut architecture | |
| 13 | Taung Kalat | Pilgrimage site | |
| 14 | Saddan Cave | Cave | |
| 15 | Kyaiktiyo Pagoda | Stupa | |
| 16 | Mingun Pahtodawgyi | Stupa | |
| 17 | Kyauk Ka Lat Pagoda | Pagoda | |
| 18 | Kakku Pagodas | Stupa |
01 Shwedagon Pagoda
Myanmar · 2.2 km from Yangon16.798° N 96.149° E
Image by sharonang from Pixabay The golden stupa of Shwedagon crowns Singuttara Hill in the middle of Yangon and dominates the whole city. The spire itself is about 112 metres tall, and with the hill beneath it its tip stands some 170 metres above sea level. It is the most sacred Buddhist site in Myanmar.
Did you know? The 23-tonne Maha Gandha bell of 1779 also fell into the river when the British tried to ship it away; divers raised it using bamboo poles.
02 Inle Lake
Myanmar · 28.6 km from Taunggyi20.550° N 96.917° E
Vyacheslav Argenberg · CC BY 4.0 Inle Lake fills a broad, shallow valley in the Shan Hills of eastern Myanmar at around 880 metres above sea level. It is the country's second-largest lake, covering over a hundred square kilometres, yet in the dry season it is only about two metres deep, rising by a metre or more once the monsoon arrives.
Did you know? Its endemic fish include the sawbwa barb, the Inle danio and the Inle snakehead, and a small crab, Inlethelphusa acanthica, also lives only here.
03 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.
04 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.
05 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.
06 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.
07 Hsinbyume Pagoda
Myanmar · 11.5 km from Mandalay22.056° N 96.017° E
Image by MarlyneArt from Pixabay On the west bank of the Irrawaddy at Mingun, a short way upriver from Mandalay, King Bagyidaw built a pagoda in 1816 in memory of his first consort and cousin, Princess Hsinbyume, who had died in childbirth nearby. It is also known as Myatheindan.
Did you know? Bagyidaw built the pagoda while still crown prince, three years before he succeeded his grandfather Bodawpaya on the throne in 1819.
08 Shite-thaung Temple
Myanmar20.598° N 93.193° E
Jmhullot · CC BY 3.0 The Shite-thaung Temple — Shitthaung in standard Burmese — is the great stone fortress-shrine of Mrauk U, the old Arakanese royal capital, and its name means "Temple of 80,000 Buddha Images".
Did you know? The pillar inscription records gifts to Buddhist monastic communities in Sri Lanka, early evidence of ties between Arakan and the island.
09 Pindaya Caves
Myanmar20.925° N 96.651° E
Image by MarlyneArt from Pixabay A limestone ridge above the small Shan State town of Pindaya holds one of the densest gatherings of sacred images anywhere in Myanmar.
Did you know? Some rare images moved out of the cave during the 1925 works were kept in a nearby monastery and destroyed there in a Second World War air raid.
10 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.
11 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.
12 Phowintaung
Myanmar · 18.3 km from Monywa22.046° N 94.984° E
Gerd Eichmann · CC BY-SA 4.0 On a low sandstone hill west of the Chindwin River in central Myanmar, hundreds of small chambers have been cut into the rock, one beside another, many no bigger than a niche and others deep enough to hold rows of seated Buddhas.
Did you know? Faces in the 17th-century murals are often said to show Shan influence, with arched brows, wide eyes, full cheeks and pointed chins.
13 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.
14 Saddan Cave
Myanmar · 16.3 km from Hpa-An16.740° N 97.718° E
kallerna · CC BY-SA 4.0 Saddan Cave is a Buddhist cave temple hidden inside a limestone karst tower at the southern end of Mount Zwegabin, in Myanmar's Kayin (Karen) State.
Did you know? At the end of the main passage a huge stalagmite stands lit by daylight falling through the far opening.
15 Kyaiktiyo Pagoda
Myanmar17.484° N 97.098° E
Image by peteranta from Pixabay Kyaiktiyo, better known as the Golden Rock, is a granite boulder perched on the very edge of a ledge near the summit of Mount Kyaiktiyo in Mon State, southern Myanmar, at about 1,100 metres above sea level.
Did you know? According to legend, the hermit who received the Buddha's hair was named Taik Tha and kept the relic tucked into the knot of his own hair.
16 Mingun Pahtodawgyi
Myanmar · 11.1 km from Mandalay22.051° N 96.017° E
Movingsaletoday, Rich Torres, Burlingame, California, USA · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Mingun Pahtodawgyi is a gigantic brick stump on the west bank of the Irrawaddy: a solid cube of masonry about 50 metres high, split by deep cracks, that was meant to become the largest stupa in the world. It is often described as the biggest pile of bricks ever raised.
Did you know? When the bell was rehung in 1896, the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company lifted the 90-tonne mass using only screw jacks and levers.
17 Kyauk Ka Lat Pagoda
Myanmar · 4.3 km from Hpa-An16.818° N 97.641° E
Paingpeace · CC BY-SA 4.0 Around Hpa-An in Myanmar's Kayin State, abrupt limestone towers rise straight out of the rice paddies, and Kyauk Ka Lat is the most improbable of them: a narrow, sheer pinnacle that thins towards its base, crowned with a small golden stupa and standing on a tiny island in the middle of an artificial lake.
Did you know? The pagoda's name begins with kyauk, the Burmese word for stone or rock, fitting a shrine perched on a limestone pinnacle.
18 Kakku Pagodas
Myanmar · 38.7 km from Taunggyi20.445° N 97.139° E
Image by MarlyneArt from Pixabay At Kakku, in the hills of southern Shan State, more than two thousand stupas stand shoulder to shoulder in a field roughly 300 by 150 m. Seen from between the rows, the slender spires rise like a forest of stone, and the whole ensemble is one of the most extraordinary Buddhist sites in Myanmar.
Did you know? Stucco reliefs on the stupas show figures in a variety of poses of veneration, and earthquakes have left many of them weathered or cracked.
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 Myanmar?
- On our list, Shwedagon Pagoda ranks first, followed by Inle Lake and Shwezigon Pagoda.
- Why do Inle Lake fishermen row with their legs?
- Standing on the stern and wrapping one leg around the oar leaves both hands free to handle nets and lets the fisherman see over the reeds and floating plants. The technique is a signature of the Intha people of the lake.
- What is the world's largest book?
- The name is given to Kuthodaw Pagoda in Mandalay, where King Mindon had the full Pali canon of Theravada Buddhism inscribed on 729 marble slabs, each housed in its own small white shrine around the main stupa.
- How many temples are there in Bagan?
- More than two thousand temples and stupas survive on the plain of Bagan out of the many thousands built while it was capital of the Pagan Kingdom between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Bagan became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Myanmar?
- In our collection, the places in Myanmar are most often pagodas (6), stupas (5), caves (2) and pilgrimage sites (2).
- How many places are on this list in Myanmar?
- The list covers 18 places.