The Most Beautiful Places in Palestine
6 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Palestine are Western Wall, Dome of the Rock and Church of the Nativity. The list covers 6 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Few places hold as many sites sacred to so many people in so small an area. The land falls from the hills of Jerusalem and Bethlehem through the Judean Desert to the Jordan Valley and the oasis of Jericho, and along that descent Jews, Christians and Muslims have built shrines, while hermits sought out the desert gorges and cliffs for monasteries that still cling to the rock.
In Jerusalem's Old City, the Western Wall is a surviving stretch of the retaining wall built around the Temple Mount in the time of Herod the Great, and the most revered place of Jewish prayer. Above it, the Dome of the Rock, completed under the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik at the end of the seventh century, is one of the oldest surviving works of Islamic architecture, an octagon clad in tile beneath its golden dome. In Bethlehem, the Church of the Nativity stands over the grotto venerated as the birthplace of Jesus, its basilica dating back to the sixth century.
The desert monasteries are a world of their own. Mar Saba, founded by Saint Sabbas in the fifth century, steps down the cliffs of the Kidron Valley; St. George's Monastery hangs on the wall of Wadi Qelt; and the Monastery of the Temptation is built into the mountain above Jericho. On the plain below, Hisham's Palace, an Umayyad estate of the eighth century, keeps a celebrated mosaic of a lion attacking a gazelle beneath a tree.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Western Wall | Archaeological site | |
| 2 | Dome of the Rock | Mosque | ✓ |
| 3 | Church of the Nativity | Church building | ✓ |
| 4 | Mar Saba (Holy Lavra of Saint Sabbas) | Lavra | |
| 5 | Hisham's Palace | Palace | |
| 6 | Monastery of the Temptation | Monastery |
01 Western Wall
Palestine · 2.6 km from Jerusalem31.777° N 35.234° E
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 3.0 What stands in the plaza today isn't a wall of the Temple itself — it's the western retaining wall of the platform the Temple sat on, part of a vast expansion Herod the Great ordered around 19 BCE to turn the Temple Mount into the largest religious platform anywhere in the ancient world.
Did you know? At its southern end, Robinson's Arch once carried a monumental staircase as wide as a modern four-lane road up onto the Temple Mount.
02 Dome of the Rock
Palestine · 2.7 km from Jerusalem31.778° N 35.235° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by best-biketours from Pixabay The Dome of the Rock is the oldest surviving major work of Islamic architecture, and its golden dome is the image most people carry of Jerusalem. The octagonal shrine stands at the centre of the Haram al-Sharif, or Temple Mount, in the Old City.
Did you know? The Knights Templar called it the Templum Domini; it inspired their round churches across Europe and appeared on the seals of the order's Grand Masters.
03 Church of the Nativity
Palestine · 8.2 km from Jerusalem31.704° N 35.208° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Leen Karajeh · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is built over a grotto that Christians have venerated as the birthplace of Jesus since at least the third century, making it the oldest site in continuous Christian worship.
Did you know? Tree-ring dating of the beams has placed the timbers between 545 and 665, suggesting Justinian's rebuilding was completed only after his death.
04 Mar Saba (Holy Lavra of Saint Sabbas)
Palestine · 14.3 km from Jerusalem31.705° N 35.331° E
Hanna Vaknin · CC0 The Holy Lavra of Saint Sabbas, known in Arabic as Mar Saba, hangs on the wall of the Kidron gorge in the Judean Desert, roughly halfway between Bethlehem and the Dead Sea.
Did you know? From the late eighth to the tenth century the monastery was a major centre for translating Greek Christian writings into Arabic.
05 Hisham's Palace
Palestine · 24.1 km from Ramallah31.882° N 35.460° E
Matson Collection · Public domain On the northern fringe of Jericho, an Umayyad country residence has left behind one of the largest unbroken mosaic floors to survive from the early Islamic world: roughly 836 square metres of stone tesserae laid in the hall of a bath complex, divided into twenty-five square fields of geometric pattern in blue, red…
Did you know? Water reached the estate by aqueducts from the springs of Na'aran.
06 Monastery of the Temptation
Palestine · 21.6 km from Ramallah31.875° N 35.432° E
Dmitrij Rodionov, DR · CC BY-SA 3.0 Clinging to a sheer limestone cliff on the edge of the Judean Desert, the Monastery of the Temptation hangs above the oasis of Jericho like a row of swallows' nests.
Did you know? Byzantine monastic life on the mountain ended with the Persian invasion of 614.
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 Palestine?
- On our list, Western Wall ranks first, followed by Dome of the Rock and Church of the Nativity.
- Why is the entrance to the Church of the Nativity so small?
- The main doorway, known as the Door of Humility, was narrowed centuries ago, traditionally to stop people riding into the church on horseback. Visitors must stoop to pass through it.
- Who built the Dome of the Rock?
- The Dome of the Rock was built under the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik and completed around 691–692. It is one of the oldest surviving major monuments of Islamic architecture.
- How old is the Mar Saba monastery?
- Mar Saba was founded in 483 by Saint Sabbas in the Kidron Valley and is regarded as one of the oldest continuously inhabited monasteries in the world.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Palestine?
- In our collection, the places in Palestine are most often churches (1), monasteries (1), lavras (1) and mosques (1).
- How many places are on this list in Palestine?
- The list covers 6 places.