The Most Beautiful Sacred Places Seen on Screen in Asia
7 places in 4 countries · updated 6 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful sacred places seen on screen in Asia are Angkor Wat (Cambodia), Hagia Sophia (Turkey) and Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Turkey). The list covers 7 sacred places seen on screen in 4 countries. Turkey has the most, with 3. Last updated 6 October 2026.
A sacred place seen on screen carries two images at once: the one its builders intended, and the one cinema fixed in millions of minds. Asia's temples and mosques lend themselves to film because their scale and light are hard to fake, from jungle-wrapped stone in Cambodia to domes above the Bosphorus and smoke drifting over the river ghats of Kathmandu. Directors came for the backdrop; the places themselves, still in use for worship, remain far older and stranger than any story told in front of them.
Angkor Wat, the twelfth-century temple-mountain of the Khmer Empire, appears in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and closes Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love. In Istanbul, Hagia Sophia, built under Justinian in the sixth century with a dome that seems to float on light, features in the James Bond film From Russia with Love. Nearby, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque is known as the Blue Mosque for the tiles of its interior, and the Süleymaniye Mosque is the masterpiece of the architect Sinan.
The Taj Mahal, built by Shah Jahan as a tomb for Mumtaz Mahal, appears in Slumdog Millionaire. In the Kathmandu Valley, Pashupatinath Temple is one of the most sacred Hindu shrines to Shiva, with cremation ghats on the banks of the Bagmati, while the stupa of Swayambhunath looks out over the valley with painted eyes from its hilltop.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Angkor Wat | Archaeological site | Cambodia | ✓ |
| 2 | Hagia Sophia | Mosque | Turkey | ✓ |
| 3 | Sultan Ahmed Mosque | Mosque | Turkey | ✓ |
| 4 | Taj Mahal | Mausoleum | India | ✓ |
| 5 | Pashupatinath Temple | Temple | Nepal | ✓ |
| 6 | Süleymaniye Mosque | Mosque | Turkey | ✓ |
| 7 | Swayambhunath | Stupa | Nepal | ✓ |
01 Angkor Wat
Cambodia · 5.4 km from Siem Reap13.412° N 103.867° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by The_5ifth from Pixabay Angkor Wat is the largest religious monument on Earth and the one building every Cambodian knows. It appears on the national flag. King Suryavarman II commissioned it in the first half of the 12th century as the state temple of his capital, Yaśodharapura, and dedicated it to Vishnu. It was most likely also intended as his mausoleum.
Did you know? The temple was built from an estimated five to ten million sandstone blocks, the heaviest weighing about 1.5 tonnes.
02 Hagia Sophia
Ayasofya
Turkey · 1.1 km from Istanbul41.008° N 28.980° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by edibejko from Pixabay The building that stands today was put up in barely five years. In January 532 the Nika riots burned down the previous church on the site, and within weeks Emperor Justinian I had started a far more ambitious replacement, designed by two scholars rather than master masons: Anthemius of Tralles, a mathematician, and Isidore of Miletus, a geometer. It was dedicated in 537.
Did you know? Envoys of the Kievan Rus' prince reported that inside they could not tell whether they were in heaven or on earth, a verdict tied to Rus' conversion to Orthodoxy.
03 Sultan Ahmed Mosque
Turkey · 1.4 km from Istanbul41.005° N 28.977° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by OWPictures from Pixabay Sultan Ahmed I commissioned this at just 19 years old, and it was built between 1609 and 1616 — a low point in Ottoman fortunes, coming right after an unfavorable peace ended a long war with Persia. An imperial mosque of this scale was, among other things, a calculated show of confidence: proof the empire hadn't actually faltered. Ahmed died the year after it was finished, at 27.
Did you know? The tile orders swallowed the entire İznik industry, and in 1613 the sultan banned making or selling tiles for anyone else until his were finished.
04 Taj Mahal
India · 2.9 km from Agra27.175° N 78.042° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Taj_Mahal,_Agra,_India_edit2.jpg : Yann ; edited by King of Hearts derivative work: Jbarta ( talk ) · CC BY-SA 3.0 Shah Jahan began building this in 1631 as a tomb for his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who had died giving birth to their fourteenth child.
Did you know? Its four minarets, each over 40 metres tall, lean slightly outward so that if one ever collapsed it would fall away from the tomb.
05 Pashupatinath Temple
Nepal · 3.5 km from Kathmandu27.710° N 85.349° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by bijayyadav from Pixabay Pashupatinath is the most important Hindu temple in Nepal and one of the holiest Shiva shrines anywhere, the destination of pilgrims from across South Asia. It stands on the banks of the Bagmati river on the eastern side of Kathmandu, where a temple is recorded as early as 400 AD.
Did you know? The name Pashupati means lord of animals, one of the epithets of Shiva, who is worshipped here as protector of all living beings.
06 Süleymaniye Mosque
Turkey · 0.9 km from Istanbul41.016° N 28.964° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by fotos1992 from Pixabay The Süleymaniye crowns Istanbul's Third Hill, and from the water its silhouette — a great central dome shouldered by cascading half-domes and four slender minarets — is one of the defining outlines of the old city's skyline. It was built for Suleiman the Magnificent by his chief architect Mimar Sinan; the inscription over the entrance gives 1550 for the foundation and 1557 for the inauguration.
Did you know? Sinan is said to have channelled the smoke of the mosque's oil lamps into a chamber above the entrance, where the soot was gathered and turned into calligraphers' ink.
07 Swayambhunath
Nepal · 2.5 km from Kathmandu27.715° N 85.290° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Vyacheslav Argenberg · CC BY 4.0 Swayambhunath crowns a wooded hill just west of Kathmandu, and from almost anywhere in the valley you can see its white dome and gilded spire, painted on all four sides with the half-closed eyes of the Buddha. For the Newar Buddhists of the valley it is one of their three holiest sites, for Tibetan Buddhists second only to Boudhanath, and Hindus worship here too.
Did you know? According to local legend, the temple's monkeys descended from lice in the long hair of the bodhisattva Manjushri.
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 sacred places seen on screen in Asia?
- On our list, Angkor Wat (Cambodia) ranks first, followed by Hagia Sophia (Turkey) and Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Turkey).
- Which country has the most sacred places seen on screen in Asia?
- In our collection, the most come from Turkey (3), Nepal (2) and Cambodia (1).
- Which films were shot at Angkor Wat?
- Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) filmed scenes at Angkor Wat and the nearby Ta Prohm, and Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love (2000) ends at Angkor Wat.
- Was From Russia with Love filmed in Istanbul?
- Yes. The 1963 James Bond film shot on location in Istanbul, including scenes in Hagia Sophia and the Basilica Cistern.
- Why is Swayambhunath called the Monkey Temple?
- Large troops of rhesus macaques live on the wooded hill around the stupa, and the name stuck. Swayambhunath is one of the oldest Buddhist sites in the Kathmandu Valley.
- How many sacred places seen on screen are on this list in Asia?
- The list covers 7 sacred places seen on screen in 4 countries. Turkey has the most, with 3.