The Most Beautiful Places in Punjab, Pakistan
8 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Punjab, Pakistan are Badshahi Mosque, Shalamar Gardens and Wazir Khan Mosque. The list covers 8 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Punjab, the land of five rivers, was the heartland of Mughal power in the northwest, and Lahore was one of the empire's great capitals. Emperors from Akbar to Aurangzeb built forts, mosques and gardens there, and earlier dynasties left monumental tombs further south in Multan. The flat, fertile plain is broken only by the Salt Range in the north and the Cholistan desert in the south, both of which add their own landmarks.
Lahore holds the core of the collection. Badshahi Mosque, built under Aurangzeb, has a vast courtyard framed in red sandstone and marble domes. Wazir Khan Mosque is covered in some of the finest Mughal tile and fresco work anywhere. Lahore Fort, with its mirrored Sheesh Mahal and a long outer wall of tile mosaics, and the terraced Shalamar Gardens of Shah Jahan are together a UNESCO site.
Beyond Lahore, Rohtas Fort, built by Sher Shah Suri in the sixteenth century, encloses a whole hillside inside stone walls with a dozen monumental gates. In Multan, the octagonal Tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam rises in brick banded with blue glazed tiles. Derawar Fort shows a long line of bastions on the edge of the Cholistan desert, and the Khewra Salt Mine has chambers and even a small mosque built from blocks of pink salt.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Badshahi Mosque | Mosque | |
| 2 | Shalamar Gardens | Historic garden | |
| 3 | Wazir Khan Mosque | Mosque | |
| 4 | Lahore Fort | Fort | ✓ |
| 5 | Khewra Salt Mine | Salt mine | |
| 6 | Tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam | Mausoleum | |
| 7 | Rohtas Fort | Fort | ✓ |
| 8 | Derawar Fort | Fort |
01 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.
02 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.
03 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.
04 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.
05 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.
06 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.
07 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.
08 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.
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 Punjab, Pakistan?
- On our list, Badshahi Mosque ranks first, followed by Shalamar Gardens and Wazir Khan Mosque.
- Who built the Badshahi Mosque?
- The Badshahi Mosque in Lahore was built by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb and completed in 1673.
- Why is Khewra salt pink?
- The rock salt of the Salt Range contains traces of iron oxide and other minerals that tint it pink and red. Khewra is one of the oldest and largest salt mines in the world.
- What is the Shalamar Gardens in Lahore?
- It is a Mughal garden built by Shah Jahan in the 1640s, laid out in three descending terraces with pools and fountains. Together with Lahore Fort it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Punjab, Pakistan?
- In our collection, the places in Punjab, Pakistan are most often forts (3), mosques (2), historic gardens (1) and mausoleums (1).
- How many places are on this list in Punjab, Pakistan?
- The list covers 8 places.