The Most Beautiful Places in Pakistan
23 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Pakistan are Attabad Lake, Badshahi Mosque and Tupopdan (Passu Cones). The list covers 23 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
In northern Pakistan three of the world's great ranges — the Karakoram, the Himalaya and the Hindu Kush — meet within sight of one another, and the Karakoram holds a greater concentration of very high peaks and long glaciers than anywhere outside the polar regions. Far to the south, on the plains of the Indus, Lahore was one of the capitals of the Mughal Empire, and the emperors left behind mosques, forts and gardens of red sandstone, marble and painted tile.
The mountains come first. K2, the second-highest mountain on Earth, is reached up the Baltoro Glacier, a river of ice lined with granite spires such as the Trango Towers, whose sheer walls are among the tallest rock faces in the world. Nanga Parbat, the western anchor of the Himalaya, rises in one of the greatest vertical reliefs on the planet, Rakaposhi towers directly above the Hunza valley, and Laila Peak is a near-perfect spear of snow and ice above the Gondogoro Glacier.
The Mughal heritage gives the list its other face. Lahore Fort and the Badshahi Mosque, built under Aurangzeb, stand side by side, the mosque's courtyard among the largest anywhere. Nearby, the Wazir Khan Mosque is covered in tile mosaic and frescoes, and the Shalamar Gardens of Shah Jahan descend in terraces of pools and fountains. In Sindh, the Makli Necropolis spreads thousands of carved stone tombs across a plateau near Thatta. And in Islamabad, the Faisal Mosque of 1986 recasts the mosque as a vast concrete tent with four pencil-thin minarets.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Attabad Lake | Lake | |
| 2 | Badshahi Mosque | Mosque | |
| 3 | Tupopdan (Passu Cones) | Summit | |
| 4 | Wazir Khan Mosque | Mosque | |
| 5 | Lake Saiful Muluk | Lake | |
| 6 | Baltit Fort | Fort | |
| 7 | Shah Jahan Mosque, Thatta | Mosque | |
| 8 | Trango Towers | Cliff | |
| 9 | Nanga Parbat | Summit | |
| 10 | Baltoro Glacier | Glacier | |
| 11 | Faisal Mosque | Mosque | |
| 12 | K2 | Mountain | |
| 13 | Rakaposhi | Mountain | |
| 14 | Shalamar Gardens | Historic garden | |
| 15 | Makli Necropolis | Necropolis | ✓ |
| 16 | Lahore Fort | Fort | ✓ |
| 17 | Laila Peak | Summit | |
| 18 | Khewra Salt Mine | Salt mine | |
| 19 | Tirich Mir | Mountain | |
| 20 | Tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam | Mausoleum | |
| 21 | Rohtas Fort | Fort | ✓ |
| 22 | Derawar Fort | Fort | |
| 23 | Princess of Hope | Rock formation |
01 Attabad Lake
Pakistan36.337° N 74.868° E
Sherazyousafzai2018 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Attabad Lake is a young lake born of catastrophe. On 4 January 2010 a massive landslide came down at the village of Attabad in the Hunza Valley of northern Pakistan, killing twenty people and damming the Hunza River completely.
Did you know? About 40 percent of the village of Gulmit was submerged, along with large parts of Hussaini and Ghulkin.
02 Badshahi Mosque
Pakistan · 4.7 km from Lahore31.588° N 74.309° E
Image by tayyab3425 from Pixabay The Badshahi Mosque, the "Imperial Mosque", faces the Alamgiri Gate of the Lahore Fort across the garden square of Hazuri Bagh on the edge of the Walled City of Lahore.
Did you know? A tunnel links the mosque to Lahore Fort, and a French cavalry officer serving the Sikh ruler Sher Singh once used it to store gunpowder.
03 Tupopdan (Passu Cones)
Tupopdan
Pakistan36.556° N 74.934° E
Sultanalipassu · CC BY-SA 3.0 Tupopdan, better known to travellers as the Passu Cones or Passu Cathedral, is a row of sharp limestone spires that rises above the Hunza valley in northern Pakistan like a set of organ pipes or a Gothic façade.
Did you know? Deep snow forced the team to give up its first approach from a snow cave on a col at 5,180 metres and try again from a neighbouring valley.
04 Wazir Khan Mosque
Pakistan · 3.3 km from Lahore31.583° N 74.323° E
Shahbaz Aslam · CC BY-SA 4.0 Inside the crowded lanes of Lahore's Walled City, a short walk from the Delhi Gate, the Wazir Khan Mosque is the most lavishly decorated building the Mughal era left in the Punjab.
Did you know? Frescoes inside show paired trees, wine pitchers and platters of fruit, imagery understood as allusions to the Islamic Paradise.
05 Lake Saiful Muluk
Pakistan34.877° N 73.694° E
Image by mhtahir7 from Pixabay At 3,224 metres, above the last trees of the Kaghan Valley, a broad green-blue lake lies in a bowl of snow-streaked mountains, with Malika Parbat, the highest peak of the valley, rising close by. 75 square kilometres in the Saiful Muluk National Park in the Mansehra District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Did you know? Manuscripts of the Saif al-Muluk romance go back to the 17th century, and the tale has been rendered in Urdu, Bengali, Balochi and English.
06 Baltit Fort
Pakistan36.326° N 74.670° E
Jamalhunzokuz · CC BY-SA 4.0 Baltit Fort rises above Karimabad in the Hunza Valley like a wooden-and-stone ship moored on a ridge, its whitewashed upper storeys and carved timber balconies set against the great snow walls of the Karakoram.
Did you know? The Balti craftsmen who remodelled the fort were sent by Abdal Khan of Skardu, father of the bride Shah Khatun.
07 Shah Jahan Mosque, Thatta
Shah Jahan Mosque
Pakistan24.747° N 67.928° E
Asultanahmad · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Shah Jahan Mosque in Thatta, in southern Sindh, was the Mughal emperor's gift to a town that had once sheltered him.
Did you know? Its blue tiles and patterned brick echo Timurid Central Asia, built while Shah Jahan was campaigning to win back his ancestral city of Samarkand.
08 Trango Towers
Pakistan35.757° N 76.201° E
mtzendo · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Trango Towers are a row of granite blades on a ridge above the Baltoro Glacier in the Karakoram, and for anyone walking towards K2 they are the first sight that seems to belong to another scale of mountain. The ridge runs north-west to south-east between the Trango and Dunge glaciers.
Did you know? The Norwegian line on Great Trango's east face was not repeated until 2008, when four Norwegians spent 27 days on the wall to reach the top.
09 Nanga Parbat
Pakistan35.239° N 74.590° E
Image by Makalu from Pixabay Nanga Parbat, 8,126 m, is the ninth-highest mountain in the world and the western cornerstone of the Himalaya, rising just south of the great bend of the Indus in Gilgit-Baltistan, in the Pakistan-administered part of Kashmir. Few mountains stand so far above their surroundings.
Did you know? In June 1937 an avalanche buried Camp IV below Rakhiot Peak, killing seven German climbers and nine Sherpas, almost the entire expedition.
10 Baltoro Glacier
Pakistan35.736° N 76.381° E
Guilhem Vellut from Paris · CC BY-SA 2.0 The Baltoro is the great highway of ice into the heart of the Karakoram. About 63 kilometres long and draining a basin of some 1,500 square kilometres in Gilgit-Baltistan, it is one of the longest glaciers outside the polar regions, a broad, rubble-covered river of ice set in a trough with walls scored by the ice.
Did you know? The glacier is remarkably gentle, with an average gradient of just 3.9 percent; south of Concordia it falls only 21 metres over two kilometres.
11 Faisal Mosque
Pakistan · 6 km from Islamabad33.730° N 73.037° E
Image by IdeasLeader from Pixabay The Faisal Mosque does not look like a mosque, and that was deliberate. In 1969 Pakistan held an international competition for a national mosque in its new capital, Islamabad. It drew more than forty entries from seventeen countries.
Did you know? The foundation stone was laid in October 1976 by King Khalid of Saudi Arabia, who had succeeded the assassinated King Faisal.
12 K2
Pakistan35.881° N 76.513° E
Zacharie Grossen · CC BY-SA 4.0 K2 is 8,611 metres high, second only to Everest, and it sits deep in the Karakoram on the line between Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan and the China-administered Trans-Karakoram Tract of Xinjiang. Its name is a survey label that stuck.
Did you know? Polish climber Wanda Rutkiewicz became the first woman to stand on the summit, on 23 June 1986.
13 Rakaposhi
Pakistan · 30.3 km from Gilgit36.142° N 74.489° E
Image by u_7scunebe3w from Pixabay Few mountains present themselves as completely as Rakaposhi.
Did you know? After the first ascent more than twenty years passed before another team reached the top, in 1979.
14 Shalamar Gardens
Pakistan · 4.2 km from Lahore31.586° N 74.382° E
Muhammad Ashar · CC BY-SA 3.0 Behind a high brick wall on the eastern edge of Lahore lies one of the great pleasure gardens of the Mughal emperors — a rectangle 658 metres long and 258 metres wide, laid out on three terraces that step down one after another, each four to five metres below the last, and alive with more than four hundred fountains.
Did you know? The Chini Khana is a three-sided marble waterfall whose walls are pierced with small niches, filled with flower vases by day and camphor candles at night.
15 Makli Necropolis
Pakistan24.761° N 67.900° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Meralkocak · CC BY-SA 4.0 Across a low, dry plateau on the edge of the Indus delta, hundreds of thousands of tombs spread over some 10 square kilometres: carved sandstone cenotaphs, brick mausoleums glazed in blue and turquoise, domed pavilions on slender columns, and stone enclosures carved so densely with rosettes, calligraphy and geometric…
Did you know? Darya Khan, whose fort-like tomb stands at Makli, was born a slave, won fame by defeating an Arghun army and rose to become prime minister of Sindh.
16 Lahore Fort
Pakistan · 4.8 km from Lahore31.590° N 74.310° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by ismanoor from Pixabay The Lahore Fort, the Shahi Qila, occupies the northern corner of Lahore's walled city and covers more than 20 hectares.
Did you know? In 1606 the Sikh Guru Arjan was imprisoned in the fort.
17 Laila Peak
Pakistan35.592° N 76.410° E
Maqsood aktar · CC BY-SA 4.0 Laila Peak rises from the Gondogoro Glacier at the head of the Hushe Valley in the Karakoram, and its shape alone makes it famous: a slender spear of rock and ice, one of the most elegant mountains in a range full of giants.
Did you know? The 1987 team came down not by their route of ascent but by abseiling down the peak's east face.
18 Khewra Salt Mine
Pakistan32.653° N 73.010° E
Shikari7 · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Khewra Salt Mine is a world hollowed out of rock salt inside the hills of the Salt Range in Punjab, and what makes it memorable is colour.
Did you know? The salt beds are Ediacaran to early Cambrian in age, laid down more than 500 million years ago.
19 Tirich Mir
Terich Mir
Pakistan36.246° N 71.844° E
KaleemUllah550 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Tirich Mir, 7,708 m, is the roof of the Hindu Kush — the highest mountain anywhere outside the Himalaya–Karakoram, and so prominent that it dominates the skyline of Chitral town, where it can be seen from the main bazaar.
20 Tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam
Pakistan · 1.8 km from Multan30.199° N 71.471° E
Yaarahmadd · CC BY-SA 4.0 Rising from the old fort mound of Multan, the tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam is a huge octagon of polished red brick crowned by a white dome, visible from far across the city.
Did you know? Unlike earlier Multan shrines, which rise from square bases, this tomb is built on an octagon from the ground up.
21 Rohtas Fort
Pakistan32.965° N 73.576° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Skazimr ( talk ) · CC BY-SA 3.0 Rohtas Fort is a military machine rather than a palace, and that is what makes it exceptional. Sher Shah Suri, the Afghan ruler who had driven the Mughal emperor Humayun into exile, founded it around 1541 on a hill above the Kahan river in the Tilla Jogian range.
Did you know? A wall some 533 metres long cuts the citadel off from the rest of the fortress, so it could hold out even if the outer fort fell.
22 Derawar Fort
Pakistan28.767° N 71.334° E
Rohaan Bhatti · CC BY-SA 3.0 In the flat, sandy expanse of the Cholistan Desert in southern Punjab, the walls of Derawar Fort rise straight out of the plain, ringed by forty massive round bastions that can be seen from miles away. 5 kilometres around the perimeter and standing up to thirty metres high, with ten bastions on each side.
Did you know? Projectiles from catapults, thought to be about a thousand years old, have been found in the debris near a decaying wall.
23 Princess of Hope
Pakistan25.424° N 65.326° E
Muhammad Shoaib Ahsan · CC BY-SA 4.0 On the dry Makran coast of Balochistan, wind and rain have worked a pinnacle of soft mud and rock into the outline of a woman: a slender column that seems to wear a crown on its head and a long flared skirt at its base.
Did you know? The Hingol River, which gives the park its name, is the longest river in Balochistan and flows all year round.
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 Pakistan?
- On our list, Attabad Lake ranks first, followed by Badshahi Mosque and Tupopdan (Passu Cones).
- How many 8,000-metre peaks are in Pakistan?
- Five: K2, Nanga Parbat, Gasherbrum I, Broad Peak and Gasherbrum II. All except Nanga Parbat are in the Karakoram around the Baltoro Glacier.
- Why is Nanga Parbat called the Killer Mountain?
- Dozens of climbers died in attempts on the mountain before its first ascent, made solo to the summit by Hermann Buhl in 1953, and it has remained one of the most dangerous 8,000-metre peaks.
- Who built the Badshahi Mosque?
- The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, who had it built in Lahore in the early 1670s opposite the gate of Lahore Fort.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Pakistan?
- In our collection, the places in Pakistan are most often mountains (4), mosques (4), forts (4) and summits (3).
- How many places are on this list in Pakistan?
- The list covers 23 places.