The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Asia

246 places in 36 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Angkor Wat

   Cambodia · 5.4 km from Siem Reap13.412° N 103.867° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The plan is a model of the Hindu cosmos. A moat 190 metres wide, over 5 km around, stands for the ocean. An outer wall about 1,024 by 802 metres encloses the grounds. Inside, three galleries rise one above another towards five lotus-bud towers arranged in a quincunx, the image of Mount Meru. Most of the visible stone is sandstone quarried at Mount Kulen and probably floated in along canals.

   Did you know? The central tower rises about 65 metres above the ground, and a causeway 350 metres long leads to it from the western gate.

   More about Angkor Wat →

2. 02 Itsukushima Shrine

   Japan · 15.2 km from Hiroshima34.296° N 132.320° E

   

   Tradition dates the first shrine to 593. Its present form comes from 1168, when Taira no Kiyomori, leader of the ascendant Heike clan, rebuilt it on a lavish scale in honour of the three goddesses of the sea enshrined here, daughters of the storm god Susanoo.

   Did you know? In 1555 the warlord Mori Motonari defeated Sue Takafusa in a battle on the island itself, then sponsored extensive repairs, rebuilding the main hall in 1571.

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3. 03 Prambanan Temple

   Indonesia · 13.2 km from Yogyakarta City7.752° S 110.491° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   That's folklore, not archaeology, but it did real historical work: the association of the ruins with a cursed, vengeful princess made pre-colonial Javanese communities wary of the site, which is part of why a temple complex this large sat neglected for so long before serious excavation and restoration began.

   Did you know? A short red-painted inscription reading 'pikatan' on a finial of the Shiva temple helped confirm King Rakai Pikatan as the founder of the complex.

   More about Prambanan Temple →

4. 04 Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi

   Kazakhstan · 1.4 km from Turkistan43.298° N 68.271° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The scale is enormous for its time: a rectangular block about 46 by 63 metres and nearly 39 metres high. Timur brought craftsmen from conquered cities, tile-cutters from Shiraz and masons and plasterers from Isfahan, under a master builder from Iran; tradition holds that Timur himself took part in the design. The entrance portal was never faced, and its raw brickwork shows exactly how the building was put together.

   Did you know? A bronze lamp made for the shrine in 1397 is inlaid with silver and gold; companion lamps ended up in the Louvre and the Hermitage.

   More about Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi →

5. 05 Bulguksa

   South Korea · 12.4 km from Gyeongju35.790° N 129.332° E

   

   The genius of Bulguksa is in its stone, not its timber. The wooden halls burned during the Japanese invasions of the 1590s and were rebuilt many times, most recently in a large restoration in 1969–73, but the Silla platforms, balustrades and stairways survive.

   Did you know? The smaller Lotus Flower and Seven Treasures bridges have 10 and 8 steps and lead to the hall of Amitabha, Buddha of the Western Paradise.

   More about Bulguksa →

6. 06 Shwedagon Pagoda

   Myanmar · 2.2 km from Yangon16.798° N 96.149° E

   

   The stupa has been heightened, gilded and rebuilt many times since. Queen Shin Sawbu, who ruled in the fifteenth century, raised it to around 40 metres and covered it in gold. An earthquake in 1768 brought down the top, and King Hsinbyushin rebuilt it to essentially its present height. The gold is refreshed by donations to this day.

   Did you know? The 42-tonne Tharrawaddy bell, donated in 1841, was finished with about 20 kg of gold plating.

   More about Shwedagon Pagoda →

7. 07 Terracotta Army

   People's Republic of China · 24.5 km from Weinan34.385° N 109.273° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   What makes the find keep giving up new detail is that no two soldiers are alike. Heads were sculpted separately from the mass-produced bodies, which let craftsmen vary hairstyle, facial features, ear shape and expression figure by figure across a workforce of thousands — more than 8,000 figures are believed to exist in total, of which just over 2,000 have been excavated from three pits so far, leaving an estimated 6,000 still underground.

   Did you know? Legs were built much like terracotta drainage pipes, and heads, arms and torsos were made separately before assembly.

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8. 08 Tomb of Cyrus the Great

   Iran30.194° N 53.167° E

   

   The best ancient description comes from Aristobulus, who travelled with Alexander the Great, as retold by Arrian and Strabo. Alexander found the tomb looted, with only the golden coffin and couch left behind, and he ordered it restored and its narrow entrance sealed.

   Did you know? The Greek writer Onesicritus claimed the tomb was a ten-storey tower with Cyrus lying on the top floor, a description that matches nothing on the site.

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9. 09 Hagia Sophia

   Ayasofya

   Turkey · 1.1 km from Istanbul41.008° N 28.980° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The dome proved as fragile as it was bold. The original collapsed after an earthquake in 558, and Isidore the Younger rebuilt it about six metres higher and ribbed, so that its thrust would fall more steeply into the walls; later partial collapses were repaired in turn. The forty windows around its base make the dome seem to hover on a ring of light while also lightening its load.

   Did you know? The present building is the third church on the site; the first was consecrated in 360 and the second, by Theodosius II, in 415.

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10. 10 Konark Sun Temple

    India · 21.7 km from Puri19.887° N 86.095° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    What stands today is the jagamohana, the great assembly hall, rising in three receding tiers of stepped roofs. The main sanctum behind it, whose tower is estimated to have been about 70 m high, collapsed in 1837, and the cause of the temple's decline is still debated.

    Did you know? The Aruna pillar, a single block of chlorite about 10 metres tall, was hauled away in the late 18th century by a Maratha monk to stand at Puri's Lion's Gate.

    More about Konark Sun Temple →

11. 11 Harmandir Sahib

    India · 2.6 km from Amritsar31.620° N 74.877° E

    

    The pool was completed under the fourth Guru, Ram Das, in 1577, and the fifth, Guru Arjan, built the first brick shrine in its centre, finished in 1589; in 1604 he installed the first compilation of Sikh scripture inside. Because the site was the spiritual centre of the community, it was repeatedly attacked: Mughal governors and Afghan armies desecrated it, filled the pool, and in 1762 Ahmad Shah Durrani had the shrine blown up.

    Did you know? The shaded spot by the Dukh Bhanjani tree is called Ath Sath Tirath, because a dip there is held to be worth visits to 68 pilgrimage sites.

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12. 12 Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery

    Israel · 3.5 km from Jerusalem31.774° N 35.243° E

    

    The reason for the choice is written into the landscape. The cemetery faces the Temple Mount directly, and Jewish tradition holds that the resurrection of the dead will begin on this hill, and that the Messiah will appear on the Mount of Olives before entering the city. For centuries Jews from across the diaspora sought to be buried here, or to have earth from the hill placed in their graves elsewhere.

    Did you know? Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi in Mandatory Palestine and a founding figure of religious Zionism, lies in the cemetery.

    More about Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery →

13. 13 Sultan Ahmed Mosque

    Turkey · 1.4 km from Istanbul41.005° N 28.977° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Its architect, Sedefkâr Mehmed Ağa, had spent twenty years as a mother-of-pearl craftsman before training under the great Mimar Sinan and turning to building design. His mosque became the first in the world raised with six minarets — a number that, until then, had been reserved for the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca.

    Did you know? Some 260 windows light the interior, and part of their coloured glass was a gift from the Republic of Venice after a request from Ahmed in 1610.

    More about Sultan Ahmed Mosque →

14. 14 Tanah Lot

    Indonesia · 14.9 km from Denpasar8.621° S 115.087° E

    

    The temple's guardian isn't only mythical. Nirartha is said to have created a venomous sea snake from his own scarf to protect the shrine, and a real snake — a banded, black-and-white species related to kraits — is kept in a small grotto at the site to this day, tended by a caretaker who lets visitors have it draped briefly over their hands as a blessing.

    Did you know? About 300 metres north of the main temple, along the same stretch of coast, stands a second shrine called Pura Batu Bolong.

    More about Tanah Lot →

15. 15 Faisal Mosque

    Pakistan · 6 km from Islamabad33.730° N 73.037° E

    

    The setting is part of the design. The mosque stands at the northern end of the city, at the foot of the Margalla Hills, and its white form stands against the green slopes. Inside, the main hall is lined with white marble and lit by a huge chandelier in the Turkish style.

    Did you know? The building cost more than 130 million Saudi riyals, and Pakistani engineers and workers carried out the construction.

    More about Faisal Mosque →

16. 16 Lotus Temple

    India · 7.7 km from New Delhi28.553° N 77.259° E

    

    Building that image at full scale took nearly ten years. The structure's 27 marble-clad petals aren't decorative panels bolted onto a frame — they're thin-shell concrete structures engineered to be self-supporting, arranged in three overlapping ranks of nine that also satisfy the strict nine-sided geometry required of every Bahá'í house of worship.

    Did you know? The temple cools itself like a chimney: air drawn over the pools enters low and escapes at the crown, a scheme tested on a model at Imperial College London.

    More about Lotus Temple →

17. 17 Potala Palace

    People's Republic of China · 2.2 km from Lhasa29.658° N 91.117° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    What stands today began in 1645 under the Fifth Dalai Lama, and the pace of the two halves of the project tells its own story. The White Palace — the residential and administrative wing — went up remarkably fast, its exterior finished in about three years.

    Did you know? In 1966 the personal intervention of Premier Zhou Enlai spared the palace from damage during the Cultural Revolution.

    More about Potala Palace →

18. 18 Khor Virap

    Armenia · 8.7 km from Artashat39.878° N 44.576° E

    

    According to Armenian tradition, King Tiridates III imprisoned Gregory the Illuminator here for thirteen years in an underground dungeon, where he survived thanks to a Christian woman who secretly dropped bread to him. When the king fell into madness, it was Gregory who was said to have cured him, and Tiridates converted; Armenia's adoption of Christianity as a state religion is traditionally dated to 301.

    Did you know? In 1255 the scholar Vardan Areveltsi founded a school of higher learning at the monastery, which became a centre of Armenian education.

    More about Khor Virap →

19. 19 Taj Mahal

    India · 2.9 km from Agra27.175° N 78.042° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    One story that does not hold up: the popular claim that Shah Jahan had the masons' hands cut off, or the architect blinded, afterward so the design could never be copied.

    Did you know? Craftsmen inlaid 28 kinds of precious and semi-precious stone into the white marble using the pietra dura technique.

    More about Taj Mahal →

20. 20 Kiyomizu-dera

    Japan · 5.3 km from Kyoto34.995° N 135.785° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The complex has burned many times. The present main hall, a National Treasure, was rebuilt in 1633 with money from the shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu, and most of the surrounding buildings, including the three-storey pagoda of 1632, date from the same decades. The hall's great wooden stage projects over the hillside on a lattice of tall pillars, a technique called kakezukuri, and no nails were used in the whole structure.

    Did you know? Its founder was the monk Kenshin, later known as Enchin, who according to tradition met Sakanoue no Tamuramaro on the mountain in 780.

    More about Kiyomizu-dera →

21. 21 Humayun's Tomb

    India · 5 km from New Delhi28.593° N 77.251° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Humayun died on 27 January 1556. His widow, Bega Begum, paid for his memorial and chose its architect, Mirak Mirza Ghiyas, brought from Herat; he died before it was finished, and his son Sayyid Muhammad completed it. Construction ran from 1565 to 1572.

    Did you know? After capturing Bahadur Shah Zafar here in September 1857, the British officer William Hodson sent the last Mughal emperor toward exile in Rangoon.

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22. 22 Dome of the Rock

    Palestine · 2.7 km from Jerusalem31.778° N 35.235° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik had it built in 691–692, and its plan owes much to Byzantine churches and palaces. A dome about 20 metres across rests on a drum carried by four piers and twelve columns; around it an octagonal arcade forms two concentric walkways that allowed pilgrims to circle the rock.

    Did you know? Until 1959 the famous dome was not golden at all but covered in blackened lead.

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23. 23 Church of the Holy Sepulchre

    Israel · 2.2 km from Jerusalem31.778° N 35.230° E

    

    The church that visitors enter today is essentially the work of the Crusaders, who took Jerusalem in 1099 and drew the scattered chapels together under one roof in Romanesque style, adding the bell tower; the work was completed in 1149, in the reign of Queen Melisende. The Romanesque entrance façade is theirs, and so are the many small crosses scratched by pilgrims into the walls of the stairway down to the Chapel of Saint Helena.

    Did you know? The Joudeh family has kept the church's key, about 30 cm long, since 1187, the year Saladin took Jerusalem.

    More about Church of the Holy Sepulchre →

24. 24 Temple of Heaven

    People's Republic of China · 2.4 km from Beijing39.882° N 116.407° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The plan works through a simple opposition: heaven is round, earth is square. The outer wall is curved at its northern end and squared off at the southern one, and the chief buildings are circular structures set in square courts. The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests is the image everyone knows, a triple-roofed timber rotunda about 36 metres across and 38 metres high on three marble terraces, built without nails.

    Did you know? Before the rites, the emperor left the Forbidden City with his whole retinue to camp inside the complex, wearing special robes and abstaining from meat.

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25. 25 Mỹ Sơn Sanctuary

    Vietnam · 35.5 km from Da Nang15.763° N 108.124° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    More than seventy temples once filled the valley. The central type is the kalan, a brick tower-sanctuary that sheltered a linga, accompanied by a mandapa, or entrance hall, a kosagrha, a small building that served as a store or fire-house, and a gopura, or gateway tower. Exactly how the Cham builders made and bonded their fine red bricks is still only partly understood.

    Did you know? Of all the temples at Mỹ Sơn only one, known as B1, was built of stone; every other building is of red brick.

    More about Mỹ Sơn Sanctuary →

26. 26 Borobudur Temple

    Indonesia · 15.5 km from Magelang7.608° S 110.204° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    And then it disappeared. As Hindu-Buddhist power in Java faded and Islam spread through the archipelago from the 14th century on, the temple was abandoned, and ash from eruptions of nearby Mount Merapi combined with jungle growth to bury it almost entirely. It survived in local memory mostly as rumour rather than a place anyone visited.

    Did you know? Stormwater drains through 100 spouts at the corners of the terraces, each carved as a different giant or makara sea monster.

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27. 27 Shah Mosque

    Iran · 5.6 km from Isfahan32.655° N 51.678° E

    

    The building also solves a real geometric problem in a way worth noticing. The square itself is laid out on one axis, but Mecca lies in another direction entirely. Rather than break the plaza's symmetry, the architects built an entrance portal aligned with the square, then angled the mosque's main body roughly 45 degrees behind it so the prayer hall faces the correct direction.

    Did you know? The entrance portal stands about 27.5 metres tall and is flanked by two minarets of about 33.5 metres; the mosque has four minarets in all.

    More about Shah Mosque →

28. 28 Chora Church (Kariye)

    Kariye Camii

    Turkey · 3.3 km from Istanbul41.031° N 28.939° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The name recalls the monastery's origin "in the country", outside the Constantinian city walls; once the Theodosian walls were built in the fifth century it found itself inside the city, and the old word became a theological pun, with Christ inscribed as the "Land of the Living" and the Virgin as the "Container of the Uncontainable".

    Did you know? Around 1500 the grand vizier Hadım Ali Pasha turned the church into a mosque, adding a brick minaret and a mihrab while leaving the Byzantine plan intact.

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29. 29 Badshahi Mosque

    Pakistan · 4.7 km from Lahore31.588° N 74.309° E

    

    Aurangzeb broke with Lahore's own tradition of mosques clad in glazed Persian-style tilework, such as the nearby Wazir Khan Mosque. Instead he followed the model of his father's Jama Masjid in Delhi on a larger scale: red sandstone carved and inlaid with white marble. A flight of 22 steps leads to a two-storey gateway decorated with carved panels and a muqarnas vault, with the emperor's full name inlaid in marble above the arch.

    Did you know? Right next to the mosque stands the Samadhi of Ranjit Singh, built from 1839 by his son Kharak Singh as a memorial to the Sikh maharaja.

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30. 30 Gur-e Amir

    Uzbekistan · 3.2 km from Samarkand39.648° N 66.969° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The mausoleum was begun in 1403 for Muhammad Sultan, Timur's grandson and chosen heir, who died suddenly on campaign. Timur had prepared a more modest tomb for himself in his home town of Shahrisabz, but when he died in 1405 on his way to invade China, the mountain passes to Shahrisabz were blocked by snow, and he was buried here in the still-unfinished building.

    Did you know? Timur was buried at the feet of his spiritual mentor, Sheikh Mir Sayyid Baraka, to whose prayers he credited his conquests.

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