The Most Beautiful Places in Russia
73 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Russia are Lake Baikal, St. Basil's Cathedral and Manpupuner rock formations. The list covers 73 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Russia spans eleven time zones, from the Baltic to the Pacific, and its landscapes run the whole range from glaciated volcanoes in the Caucasus to the rift that holds Lake Baikal and the permafrost of Yakutia. Its architecture is shaped by a different kind of scale: centuries of fortress building along shifting frontiers, monasteries founded deep in the forest, and an imperial capital on the Neva that Peter the Great designed to face Europe.
Mount Elbrus, a dormant volcano with two snow-covered summits, is the highest peak of the Caucasus, and Belukha crowns the Altai far to the east. Lake Baikal is the deepest and oldest lake on Earth, holding roughly a fifth of the world's unfrozen fresh surface water. Human-made depths can be just as dramatic: the Mir diamond mine in Yakutia is an open pit more than 500 metres deep and over a kilometre across.
In Moscow, the Spasskaya Tower, built in 1491 by the Italian architect Pietro Antonio Solari, carries the Kremlin's famous clock above Red Square, while Komsomolskaya station on the Circle Line turns a metro hall into a vaulted ballroom of mosaics and chandeliers. The Bolshoi Theatre's portico has been a symbol of Russian ballet since the nineteenth century. In St Petersburg, Falconet's Bronze Horseman shows Peter the Great on a single granite boulder, and the Grand Palace at Peterhof presides over cascades of gilded fountains. On the Narva river, Ivangorod Fortress, founded in 1492, faces a castle across the water, and in Volgograd The Motherland Calls raises her sword above the Volga.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lake Baikal | Lake | ✓ |
| 2 | St. Basil's Cathedral | Church building | |
| 3 | Manpupuner rock formations | Rock formation | |
| 4 | Church of the Savior on Blood | Church building | |
| 5 | Klyuchevskaya Sopka | Volcano | |
| 6 | Peterhof Grand Palace | Palace | |
| 7 | Lena Pillars | Protected area | ✓ |
| 8 | Sulak Canyon | Canyon | |
| 9 | Mount Elbrus | Mountain | |
| 10 | Bolshoi Theatre | Theatre building | |
| 11 | Bronze Horseman | Sculpture | |
| 12 | Spasskaya Tower | Clock tower | |
| 13 | Belukha | Mountain | ✓ |
| 14 | Mir diamond mine | Mine | |
| 15 | Ivangorod Fortress | Fortress | |
| 16 | The Motherland Calls | War memorial | |
| 17 | Komsomolskaya Metro Station (Circle Line) | Railway station | |
| 18 | Kolomenskoye | Open-air museum | |
| 19 | Saint Isaac's Cathedral | Cathedral | ✓ |
| 20 | Red Square | Square | ✓ |
| 21 | Catherine Palace, Tsarskoye Selo | Palace | ✓ |
| 22 | Pskov Krom | Fortress | |
| 23 | Worker and Kolkhoz Woman | Sculpture | |
| 24 | Cathedral of Saint Demetrius | Cathedral | ✓ |
| 25 | Peter and Paul Cathedral, Saint Petersburg | Cathedral | |
| 26 | Church of the Ascension, Kolomenskoye | Church building | ✓ |
| 27 | Palace Square | Square | ✓ |
| 28 | Main Building of Moscow State University | Skyscraper | |
| 29 | Peter and Paul Fortress | Fort | ✓ |
| 30 | Kalyazin Bell Tower | Bell tower |
01 Lake Baikal
Russia53.303° N 108.005° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by Peggy_Marco from Pixabay Baikal holds roughly a fifth of all the unfrozen fresh water on Earth's surface — more than all five of North America's Great Lakes combined — despite a surface area that's a fraction of theirs, because the lake plunges to a maximum depth of about 1,642 metres, deeper than almost any point on the ocean floor within a…
Did you know? Tiny endemic copepods make up 80 to 90 per cent of the lake's biomass and filter as much as a thousand cubic kilometres of water a year.
02 St. Basil's Cathedral
Russia · 0.6 km from Moscow55.752° N 37.623° E
Image by opsa from Pixabay St. Basil's Cathedral was built between 1555 and 1561 on Ivan the Terrible's orders to commemorate the Russian capture of the Tatar stronghold of Kazan in 1552 — which is why it isn't dedicated to Basil at all in its official name, the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Virgin on the Moat.
Did you know? French troops occupying Moscow in 1812 used the church as a stable, and an order to blow it up as they left was never carried out.
03 Manpupuner rock formations
Russia62.258° N 59.298° E
Aleksandr Chazov · CC BY-SA 4.0 On a bare plateau west of the main ridge of the northern Urals stand seven stone giants. The Manpupuner pillars rise between 30 and 42 metres from the tundra, lined up at the edge of the plateau like figures frozen in the middle of a march.
Did you know? Onlookers have long seen the pillars as a giant man, a horse's head or a ram, depending on the angle.
04 Church of the Savior on Blood
Russia · 0.8 km from Saint Petersburg59.940° N 30.329° E
AndreyWi · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Church of the Savior on Blood marks the exact spot on the Griboedov Canal embankment where Alexander II was fatally wounded by a bomb thrown by a member of the Narodnaya Volya revolutionary group in March 1881.
Did you know? The central dome rises to 81 metres, and the church was designed to hold up to 1,600 people.
05 Klyuchevskaya Sopka
Russia56.067° N 160.633° E
Tamten at cs.wikipedia · Public domain Klyuchevskaya Sopka is the tallest active volcano in Eurasia and the highest mountain in Siberia: a near-perfect cone that rises to about 4,750 metres from the broad valley of the Kamchatka River, so much higher than anything around it that its prominence ranks among the greatest on earth.
Did you know? A 2007 ash plume about 10 km high disrupted air routes between North America and Asia and dusted Unimak Island in Alaska with ash.
06 Peterhof Grand Palace
Russia · 37.2 km from Gatchina59.885° N 29.909° E
Image by rperucho from Pixabay The Grand Palace at Peterhof is the long golden-and-cream façade that crowns the terrace above the Grand Cascade, looking down the Sea Channel towards the Gulf of Finland.
Did you know? For the Chinese cabinets, lacquer screens brought to Russia under Peter the Great were sawn lengthwise so that both painted faces could be used.
07 Lena Pillars
Russia61.107° N 127.362° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
VasilyevaED · CC BY-SA 4.0 The pillars along the Lena River are limestone, not granite, and that's the point — this rock records life from before there were skeletons to speak of.
Did you know? Excavations at the mouth of the Diring-Yuryakh stream uncovered ancient stone tools and Late Neolithic burials from the second millennium BC.
08 Sulak Canyon
Russia · 30.4 km from Buynaksk43.010° N 46.828° E
Папанина Александра · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Sulak River cuts through the mountains of central Dagestan in a canyon about 53 km long and as much as 1,920 metres deep, one of the deepest in Europe.
Did you know? In 1967 builders of the Chirkey Dam blocked the river with a single directed explosion of 37 tonnes of explosives that brought down more than 65,000 cubic metres of rock.
09 Mount Elbrus
Russia43.353° N 42.438° E
Image by vishstudio from Pixabay Elbrus is a volcano that stopped short of the main Caucasus ridge.
Did you know? Elbrus is the highest volcano in Eurasia and ranks as the tenth most topographically prominent peak on Earth.
10 Bolshoi Theatre
Russia · 0.8 km from Moscow55.760° N 37.619° E
Юрий Д.К. · CC BY 4.0 The eight-columned portico on Theatre Square, crowned by Apollo driving a four-horse chariot, is one of the most familiar façades in Russia — it even appears on the 100-rouble banknote. Behind it is the Bolshoi, home to one of the oldest and most celebrated ballet and opera companies in the world.
Did you know? Before the six-year restoration that began in 2005, engineers judged more than three quarters of the building's structure to be unstable.
11 Bronze Horseman
Russia · 0.8 km from Saint Petersburg59.937° N 30.302° E
Godot13 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Bronze Horseman is the equestrian statue of Peter the Great that has stood in Senate Square in Saint Petersburg since 1782, and it has become the emblem of the city.
Did you know? The transport of the stone was devised by Marinos Carburis, a Greek officer from Kefalonia who had trained as an engineer in Vienna.
12 Spasskaya Tower
Russia · 0.5 km from Moscow55.752° N 37.621° E
Юрий Д.К. · CC BY 4.0 The Spasskaya Tower is the main tower of the Moscow Kremlin's eastern wall and the face that the Kremlin turns to Red Square: a fortified gate tower below, a tiered top with a hipped spire, the great clock, and a red star at the summit. Its height with the star is 71 metres.
Did you know? Peter the Great replaced the clock in 1706 with a Dutch-made mechanism and a 12-hour dial, and his officials collected beard tax at the gate.
13 Belukha
Russia49.807° N 86.590° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
No machine-readable author provided. Vitecek~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). · CC BY-SA 3.0 Belukha is the highest mountain of the Altai and of Siberia, a double-headed massif of ice on the border between Russia and Kazakhstan.
Did you know? The first estimate of its height, made in 1835 by the naturalist Friedrich Gebler, came to about 11,000 feet, over a kilometre short.
14 Mir diamond mine
Russia · 2 km from Mirny62.526° N 113.984° E
Yanaudanenko · CC BY 4.0 On the edge of the town of Mirny in Yakutia, the ground drops away into a vast spiral funnel: the Mir pipe, one of the largest holes ever dug by people.
Did you know? Before underground mining began, the bottom of the pit was sealed with a protective rock cushion about 45 metres thick.
15 Ivangorod Fortress
Russia · 2.7 km from Narva59.375° N 28.208° E
Photographer: Mosbatho · CC BY 4.0 Few places on earth stage a medieval standoff as literally as the Narva River. On its west bank stands Hermann Castle in Estonia; on the east bank, barely a stone's throw away, rises Ivangorod Fortress in Russia.
Did you know? The Treaty of Teusina returned Ivangorod to Russia in 1595, and the Treaty of Stolbovo handed it back to Sweden in 1617.
16 The Motherland Calls
Russia · 4.4 km from Volgograd48.742° N 44.537° E
Image by alex1983 from Pixabay The Motherland Calls stands on top of Mamayev Kurgan, the hill above the Volga in Volgograd that was fought over almost continuously during the Battle of Stalingrad, from September 1942 to January 1943.
Did you know? Inside, the figure is divided into concrete cells about three by three by four metres, with passages for inspectors and instruments monitoring its movement.
17 Komsomolskaya Metro Station (Circle Line)
Russia · 3.7 km from Moscow55.776° N 37.656° E
A.Savin · CC BY-SA 3.0 Under the Moscow square where three main-line railway terminals meet, the Circle line has its grandest hall.
Did you know? Engineers wanted slender columns while Shchusev demanded 1.5-metre ones; the octagonal columns were finally built about 0.8 metres thick.
18 Kolomenskoye
Russia · 10.2 km from Moscow55.668° N 37.667° E
Image by 2919569 from Pixabay Long before it became a royal residence, Kolomenskoye's name may have started with refugees. Local tradition holds that the village was founded by people fleeing Kolomna during the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, carrying the name of the town they had lost with them to their new home on the outskirts of Moscow.
Did you know? The Iron Age hillfort at Dyakovo, inside the estate, gave its name to the Dyakovo culture of early peoples of central Russia.
19 Saint Isaac's Cathedral
Russia · 0.9 km from Saint Petersburg59.934° N 30.306° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Florstein ( Telegram: WikiPhoto.Space ) · CC BY-SA 4.0 5 metres over the square that bears its name, and on a clear day it is the reference point for half of central Saint Petersburg. The building is the fourth church on the site, commissioned by Alexander I and entrusted to Auguste de Montferrand, a French-born architect trained in the studio of Charles Percier.
Did you know? Once the rigging was ready, hoisting a single 114-tonne portico column into place took only about 40 to 45 minutes.
20 Red Square
Russia · 0.4 km from Moscow55.754° N 37.620° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by joneybrain from Pixabay Red Square is a long rectangle — about 330 metres from end to end — laid along the eastern wall of the Moscow Kremlin, where the fortress had no river to protect it.
Did you know? The glass roof of the GUM trading rows was assembled from around 60,000 panes, an engineering feat for the 1890s.
21 Catherine Palace, Tsarskoye Selo
Russia · 25.5 km from Saint Petersburg59.716° N 30.396° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Игорь Гордеев · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Catherine Palace is the Russian Baroque at its most exuberant: a facade some 300 metres long, painted sky blue, lined with snow-white columns and pilasters, and crowned with gilded ornament on which almost 100 kg of gold was spent.
Did you know? The empress's bedroom was decorated with Wedgwood jasperware reliefs designed by John Flaxman and George Stubbs.
22 Pskov Krom
Russia · 1 km from Pskov57.821° N 28.329° E
Alexxx1979 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Pskov Krom is the kremlin at the very origin of the city: a narrow, high promontory where the Pskova River flows into the Velikaya, fortified since at least the 8th century and first named in the chronicles as the "Krom" in 1113. 5 hectares, named after the 13th-century prince who walled it.
23 Worker and Kolkhoz Woman
Russia · 8.5 km from Moscow55.828° N 37.647° E
Image by EvgeniT from Pixabay A man and a woman in stainless steel stride forward, raising a hammer and a sickle so that together they form the Soviet emblem: Worker and Kolkhoz Woman is the defining image of Soviet socialist realism, rendered with an Art Deco sense of movement.
Did you know? Assembling the figures in the factory yard required a crane 35 metres tall with a 15-metre boom.
24 Cathedral of Saint Demetrius
Russia · 0.1 km from Vladimir56.129° N 40.411° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Mike1979 Russia · CC BY-SA 4.0 The cathedral of Saint Demetrius was built not for a city but for a prince.
Did you know? Vsevolod's own baptismal name was Dmitry, which is why he dedicated his court church to Demetrius of Thessaloniki.
25 Peter and Paul Cathedral, Saint Petersburg
Russia · 1 km from Saint Petersburg59.950° N 30.317° E
Image by LuidmilaKot from Pixabay The gilded needle that rises over the Neva from Hare Island belongs to the first stone church of Saint Petersburg.
26 Church of the Ascension, Kolomenskoye
Russia · 10.3 km from Moscow55.667° N 37.671° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by 2919569 from Pixabay The Church of the Ascension stands on a high bank above the Moskva River in Kolomenskoye, a former royal estate that is now a park and museum-reserve in the south of Moscow.
Did you know? Between 1986 and 1997 restorers identified more than 2,200 fragments of carved stone and matched each to its place in the decoration.
27 Palace Square
Russia · 0.2 km from Saint Petersburg59.939° N 30.315° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
W. Bulach · CC BY-SA 4.0 Palace Square is where St Petersburg performed its role as imperial capital, and later where that empire came apart. The square takes its name from the Winter Palace, the Baroque residence of the tsars rebuilt between 1754 and 1762 in white and turquoise, which fills its northern side.
Did you know? In July 1924 the square hosted a game of living chess, with Red Army soldiers as the white pieces and sailors as the black.
28 Main Building of Moscow State University
Russia · 7.7 km from Moscow55.703° N 37.531° E
Dmitry A. Mottl · CC BY-SA 3.0 From the top of the Sparrow Hills a single tower rises 239 m over southwest Moscow, crowned by a spire and a five-pointed star.
Did you know? The building holds 148 lecture halls, a 1,500-seat assembly hall and some 5,754 rooms for students and postgraduates.
29 Peter and Paul Fortress
Russia · 1 km from Saint Petersburg59.950° N 30.317° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by OlgaSadrova from Pixabay Saint Petersburg began here. On 27 May 1703 (16 May Old Style) Peter the Great founded a fortress on Hare Island on the Neva, and the city counts its birthday from that day. The earthen defences were soon replaced in stone to designs by the Swiss-Italian architect Domenico Trezzini, and work went on from 1706 to 1740.
Did you know? Other prisoners included the Decembrists, the writer Alexander Radishchev, Maxim Gorky and Lenin's elder brother Alexander Ulyanov.
30 Kalyazin Bell Tower
Russia57.244° N 37.857° E
Image by Olga_Fil from Pixabay In the middle of the Volga near Kalyazin, a slender five-tiered bell tower stands on a small island of its own, with water where the town square used to be. 5 metres tall, rising without a church from the river, its reflection doubled in still water.
Did you know? The town takes its name from Kolyaga, a fifteenth-century landowner, though a settlement existed here from about the twelfth century.
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 Russia?
- On our list, Lake Baikal ranks first, followed by St. Basil's Cathedral and Manpupuner rock formations.
- How deep is Lake Baikal?
- Lake Baikal reaches a depth of about 1,640 metres, making it the deepest lake in the world. It lies in an active continental rift and is also thought to be the oldest lake on Earth, at around 25 million years.
- Is Mount Elbrus a volcano?
- Yes. Elbrus is a dormant stratovolcano with two summits, the western one slightly higher at about 5,640 metres. Its last eruption is thought to have taken place roughly two thousand years ago, and its slopes are covered by more than twenty glaciers.
- Who made the Bronze Horseman in St Petersburg?
- The equestrian statue of Peter the Great was created by the French sculptor Étienne Maurice Falconet and unveiled in 1782 on the orders of Catherine the Great. It stands on the Thunder Stone, an enormous granite boulder dragged to the city for the purpose.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Russia?
- In our collection, the places in Russia are most often churches (10), cathedrals (8), fortresses (8) and monasteries (7).
- How many places are on this list in Russia?
- The list covers 73 places.