The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in India
32 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful sacred places in India are Konark Sun Temple, Harmandir Sahib and Lotus Temple. The list covers 32 sacred places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
India gave the world four religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, and absorbed a fifth tradition of building when the Mughals brought Persian domes and gardens to the subcontinent. For more than a thousand years, dynasties from the Cholas in the south to the Hoysalas in the Deccan treated the temple as a cosmic diagram in stone and covered it with sculpture, while the Mughals made the tomb itself an image of paradise.
The Konark Sun Temple in Odisha was conceived as the chariot of the sun god Surya, with twenty-four carved stone wheels and a team of horses. The Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya marks the place where the Buddha attained enlightenment, and the Brihadisvara Temple at Thanjavur, completed under the Chola king Rajaraja I around 1010, raises its granite tower high above the plain. At Belur, the Hoysala temple of Chennakeshava is covered in intricately carved stone figures, and in Madurai the gateway towers of the Meenakshi Temple swarm with painted gods.
The Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar, the holiest shrine of Sikhism, stands gilded in the middle of its sacred pool. Humayun's Tomb in Delhi set the pattern of the Mughal garden tomb that the Taj Mahal, built by Shah Jahan for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, carried to perfection in white marble. High in the Himalaya, Kedarnath is one of the twelve jyotirlinga shrines of Shiva, and in Delhi the Bahá'í Lotus Temple opens in marble petals.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Konark Sun Temple | Temple | ✓ |
| 2 | Harmandir Sahib | Temple | |
| 3 | Lotus Temple | Temple | |
| 4 | Taj Mahal | Mausoleum | ✓ |
| 5 | Humayun's Tomb | Mausoleum | ✓ |
| 6 | Kedarnath Temple | Pilgrimage site | |
| 7 | Mahabodhi Temple | Temple | ✓ |
| 8 | Modhera Sun Temple | Temple | |
| 9 | Meenakshi Temple | Temple | |
| 10 | Brihadisvara Temple, Thanjavur | Temple | ✓ |
| 11 | Chennakeshava Temple, Belur | Temple | |
| 12 | Akbar's Tomb | Mausoleum | |
| 13 | Gol Gumbaz | Mausoleum | |
| 14 | Jaswant Thada | Mausoleum | |
| 15 | Thikse Monastery | Monastery | |
| 16 | Tomb of I'timad-ud-Daulah | Mausoleum | |
| 17 | Key Monastery | Monastery | |
| 18 | Khajuraho Group of Monuments | Temple | ✓ |
| 19 | Ranganathaswamy Temple, Srirangam | Temple | |
| 20 | Paradesi Synagogue | Synagogue | |
| 21 | Lamayuru Monastery | Monastery | |
| 22 | Ranakpur Jain Temple | Temple | |
| 23 | Qutb Shahi tombs | Mausoleum | |
| 24 | Ramappa Temple | Temple | ✓ |
| 25 | Ramanathaswamy Temple | Temple | |
| 26 | Dilwara Temple | Temple | |
| 27 | Shatrunjaya | Pilgrimage site | |
| 28 | Tawang Monastery | Monastery | |
| 29 | Phuktal Monastery | Monastery | |
| 30 | Ibrahim Rouza | Mausoleum |
01 Konark Sun Temple
India · 21.7 km from Puri19.887° N 86.095° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Souravdas1987 · CC BY-SA 4.0 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.
02 Harmandir Sahib
India · 2.6 km from Amritsar31.620° N 74.877° E
This picture has been taken by Oleg Yunakov . Contact e-mail: yunakov gmail.com . Image can be used in accordance with the terms of the СС-BY-SA license. Other photos can be seen here . · CC BY-SA 3.0 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.
03 Lotus Temple
India · 7.7 km from New Delhi28.553° N 77.259° E
Image by harmeet9000 from Pixabay 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.
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 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.
05 Humayun's Tomb
India · 5 km from New Delhi28.593° N 77.251° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by karanpal41 from Pixabay 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.
06 Kedarnath Temple
India30.733° N 79.067° E
Shivam Kumar 766 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The date of the original temple and the name of its builder are unknown. One of the earliest references to Kedara appears in the Skanda Purana, which names it as the place where Shiva released the waters of the Ganges from his matted hair, and by the 12th century the site was clearly an established pilgrimage centre.
Did you know? The 2013 flood swept away the old memorial to Adi Shankaracharya behind the temple.
07 Mahabodhi Temple
India · 11.5 km from Gaya24.696° N 84.991° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Sumitsurai · CC BY-SA 4.0 Ashoka's own shrine has vanished, and the building you see is essentially of the Gupta period, the 5th to 6th century, though parts may be older still. It is a rare survival: a brick temple faced with stucco, a far less durable material than stone.
Did you know? The Tibetan monk Dharmasvamin visited in 1234 and left a rare eyewitness account of the site after the invasions of the late 12th century.
08 Modhera Sun Temple
India23.584° N 72.133° E
Nandicmb · CC BY-SA 4.0 The first is the kunda, a rectangular stepped tank roughly 54 by 37 metres, its four terraces descending in a fractal cascade of small steps and miniature shrines towards the water. It reads almost like a sculpture in its own right, and in still weather it doubles the temple in reflection.
Did you know? The sanctum had an upper and a lower chamber; the upper floor has collapsed, and the pedestal of the lost image now lies in the pit below.
09 Meenakshi Temple
India · 0.3 km from Madurai9.920° N 78.119° E
Image by prasanna_devadas from Pixabay What's standing today is largely not ancient in the way it looks. The temple complex was almost completely destroyed in 1310 during Malik Kafur's Deccan campaign for the Delhi Sultanate, and most of what visitors walk through now — including the towering gopurams — was rebuilt between the 14th and 17th centuries under Vijayanagara and Nayak rulers, especially Tirumalai Nayak.
Did you know? At the centre of the Golden Lotus Tank, a pool about 50 by 37 metres, floats a gilded lotus.
10 Brihadisvara Temple, Thanjavur
India · 2.4 km from Thanjavur10.783° N 79.132° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France · CC BY 2.0 The complex is a long rectangle of roughly 240 by 120 metres, entered from the east through two stone gateways, the second more richly carved than the first. Inside, a colonnaded cloister about 450 metres around encloses the courtyard. A monolithic Nandi, some 6 metres long and 25 tonnes in weight, faces the sanctum from its own pavilion; the lingam inside, which only priests may approach, is almost 9 metres tall and among the largest in India.
Did you know? Better photography showed that a fresco long read as Shiva as teacher actually depicts a royal guru meditating under a banyan tree.
11 Chennakeshava Temple, Belur
India13.163° N 75.861° E
Dineshkannambadi ( talk ) · CC BY-SA 3.0 The building itself is compact, set on a raised platform with a stepped, star-like outline that multiplies the corners of the walls and gives every surface its own play of light and shadow. The stone is a fine-grained chloritic schist, often called soapstone, which allowed the carvers an almost jeweller's precision.
Did you know? On the four bracket figures under the central dome, some of the carved stone necklaces and bracelets hang free and can actually be moved.
12 Akbar's Tomb
India · 8.2 km from Agra27.221° N 77.951° E
Adrianne Wadewitz · CC BY-SA 3.0 Akbar ruled from 1556 to 1605 and turned the Mughal state into an empire covering much of the Indian subcontinent; his courts at Agra, Delhi and Fatehpur Sikri drew poets, scholars, architects and holy men of many faiths. He fell ill in October 1605 and died later that month.
Did you know? The garden that Mariam-uz-Zamani laid out nearby already held an open pavilion built in 1495 under Sultan Sikandar Lodi, which Jahangir converted into her tomb.
13 Gol Gumbaz
India · 2.8 km from Vijayapura16.830° N 75.736° E
Image by sarangib from Pixabay The mausoleum was built for Mohammed Adil Shah, seventh sultan of Bijapur, who came to the throne in 1627 and under whom the sultanate reached its greatest extent. Each ruler of the dynasty sought a grander tomb than his predecessor, and Mohammed meant to outdo the refined Ibrahim Rauza of his father, Ibrahim Adil Shah II.
Did you know? The brick dome is about 10 feet thick at its base and still about 9 feet thick near the crown.
14 Jaswant Thada
India · 1.5 km from Jodhpur26.304° N 73.025° E
Jakub Hałun · CC BY-SA 4.0 The cenotaph was commissioned in 1899 by Maharaja Sardar Singh of Jodhpur in memory of his father, Maharaja Jaswant Singh II, and was completed in 1906. It was conceived both as a memorial and as the cremation ground of the Rathore royal family of Marwar, a role it still holds; three further cenotaphs stand in the grounds.
Did you know? The temple-like central dome rests on twelve slender marble pillars arranged in a square.
15 Thikse Monastery
India · 14.6 km from Leh34.056° N 77.667° E
Image by cascayoyo from Pixabay Inside the complex are courtyards, assembly halls and small dark chapels full of murals, thangkas, stupas and ranks of bronze images. The most famous room is modern: a temple housing a seated Maitreya, the Buddha of the future, about 15 metres high and rising through two storeys, so that visitors on the upper floor meet his face at eye level. It was made to mark the visit of the 14th Dalai Lama in 1970 and took four years to complete.
Did you know? Its library keeps the 225 volumes of the Tengyur, the classical Indian commentaries on the Buddha's teachings translated into Tibetan.
16 Tomb of I'timad-ud-Daulah
India · 2.9 km from Agra27.192° N 78.031° E
Rohit Sharma · CC BY-SA 4.0 Its importance in architectural history is out of proportion to its size. It is the first Mughal building in India faced entirely in white marble, and the first on which pietra dura, the inlay of cut semi-precious stones into marble, is used on such a scale.
Did you know? The white marble came from Makrana in Rajasthan and is inlaid with carnelian, jasper, lapis lazuli, onyx and topaz.
17 Key Monastery
India32.298° N 78.012° E
Image by Ahmadgulfar07 from Pixabay Its origins are traced to the eleventh century and to Dromtön, a disciple of the Indian teacher Atisha, though what stands today is the product of repeated rebuilding. Mongol raiders plundered it in the seventeenth century; it was sacked again during the wars between Ladakh and Kullu around 1821, damaged by Dogra and Sikh forces in 1841, swept by fire in the same decade and shaken by an earthquake in 1975.
Did you know? Many of the monks leave for monasteries in South India in winter, when Spiti is cut off by snow and severe cold.
18 Khajuraho Group of Monuments
India24.850° N 79.933° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Hiroki Ogawa · CC BY 3.0 The temples are best known for their erotic sculpture, but that reputation distorts what a visitor actually sees. Sexual scenes make up less than a tenth of the carving, and most are placed so discreetly that a guide has to point them out. The overwhelming impression is of walls alive with figures: gods and goddesses, musicians, warriors and scenes of everyday life, set in rows that climb towards the spires.
Did you know? According to local legend the temple town once had 64 bodies of water; archaeologists have so far identified 56 of them.
19 Ranganathaswamy Temple, Srirangam
India · 6.8 km from Trichy10.862° N 78.690° E
Ssriram mt · CC BY-SA 4.0 The temple's beginnings reach back into the early centuries of the Chola kingdom, and more than 600 inscriptions record gifts and rebuilding by Cholas, Pandyas, Hoysalas, the Vijayanagara empire and the Nayaks from the 7th to the 17th century. In the 11th and 12th centuries the philosopher Ramanuja lived and taught here, and the temple became the heart of Sri Vaishnava thought.
Did you know? It is the only Vishnu temple praised by all twelve Alvar poet-saints, who dedicated 247 hymns to Ranganatha.
20 Paradesi Synagogue
India · 7.8 km from Kochi9.957° N 76.259° E
Vis M · CC BY-SA 4.0 The building suffered in 1662, when it was burnt during the Portuguese wars on the coast, and was restored after the Dutch took over the region the following year. Its most memorable feature arrived a century later: in the 1760s the merchant Ezekiel Rahabi brought from Canton about 1,100 hand-painted blue-and-white porcelain tiles, each with its own willow-pattern scene, and laid them across the floor.
Did you know? Among the synagogue's treasures is an oriental rug given by the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie.
21 Lamayuru Monastery
India34.283° N 76.774° E
Ingo Mehling · CC BY-SA 4.0 It counts among the oldest monasteries in Ladakh. Its roots go back to the 11th century, and before it became a Buddhist house it is said to have been a centre of Bon, the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet; its alternative name, Yungdrung, is the Bon word for the swastika, a symbol of eternity in that tradition.
Did you know? Lamayuru belongs to the same early generation as Alchi and Wanla; most such gompas later passed to the Gelug school, but Lamayuru went to the Drikung.
22 Ranakpur Jain Temple
India25.135° N 73.447° E
Image by Glavo from Pixabay The plan is what makes Ranakpur extraordinary. It is a chaumukha, a "four-faced" temple: the central sanctum holds a fourfold image of Adinatha looking out to the four cardinal directions, and the building opens towards it on all four sides, a symbol of the Tirthankara's mastery over the whole world. Around this core the temple spreads across some 4,500 square metres in a maze of halls, shrines and courtyards under around eighty domes.
Did you know? Another legend holds that the temple's pillars cannot be counted: anyone who tries arrives at a different total.
23 Qutb Shahi tombs
India · 8.7 km from Hyderabad17.395° N 78.396° E
Bernard Gagnon · CC BY-SA 3.0 The sequence begins with the tomb of the founder, Sultan Quli Qutb-ul-Mulk, built during his lifetime in 1543 on a terrace about 30 metres square, its octagonal chamber setting the model for his successors. The tomb of his son Jamsheed, of 1550, is the exception: two storeys tall, slender, and the only royal tomb here not built of black basalt.
Did you know? Under the dynasty the necropolis was known as Lagar-e-Faiz Athar, roughly 'place of bountiful entertainment'.
24 Ramappa Temple
India18.259° N 79.942° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Ms Sarah Welch · CC0 The temple faces east and stands on a star-shaped base set on a platform about two metres high. Beyond the entrance porches lies a large pillared hall with a raised platform for dance, then an antechamber and the sanctum, crowned by a tower. The builders used pink sandstone for the main structure, granite for columns, beams and ceilings, and hard black dolerite for the carving. Two technical details stand out.
Did you know? The ceiling panels include the churning of the ocean of milk and the marriage of Shiva and Parvati.
25 Ramanathaswamy Temple
India9.288° N 79.317° E
Ssriram mt · CC BY-SA 4.0 What makes Ramanathaswamy extraordinary to look at is its corridors. The temple grew over many centuries, with the Pandyas in the twelfth century, the Jaffna kings who rebuilt the sanctum around 1380–1410, and the Sethupathi rulers of Ramnad who gave the complex its present shape in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Did you know? Tradition says the shrine began as a simple thatched shed before centuries of royal patrons turned it into a stone complex.
26 Dilwara Temple
India24.609° N 72.723° E
Malaiya at en.wikipedia · GFDL The oldest shrine, Vimal Vasahi, was raised around 1031 by Vimal Shah, a minister of the Chaulukya king Bhima I, and is dedicated to Rishabhanatha, the first tirthankara. Its central sanctuary sits in an open court ringed by a corridor of small cells, and its domed hall carries the sixteen goddesses of learning. A century later a descendant added the Hastishala, a hall of carved elephants bearing members of the founder's family.
Did you know? In Luna Vasahi alone there are 130 pillars, 38 of them richly carved.
27 Shatrunjaya
India21.468° N 71.800° E
Image by 710beppo from Pixabay For Jains this is one of the holiest places on Earth. Tradition holds that Rishabhanatha, the first Tirthankara, came to the hill, and that his disciple Pundarika attained liberation on the hill, which was therefore once called Pundarikgiri. According to Jain belief, 23 of the 24 Tirthankaras sanctified the hill with their visits, all except Neminatha.
Did you know? The Anandji Kalyanji Trust, which still manages the temples, has been responsible for the site since the 18th century.
28 Tawang Monastery
India27.586° N 91.858° E
Vikramjit Kakati · CC BY-SA 4.0 It was founded in 1680–81 by Merak Lama Lodre Gyatso at the wish of the 5th Dalai Lama, and belongs to the Gelug school, long linked to Drepung Monastery in Lhasa. Local tradition says a horse chose the site: unable to find a suitable place, the lama withdrew into a cave to pray, and when he came out his horse had wandered off and was found grazing on this hilltop, which he took as a sign. The name Tawang is often read as "chosen by the horse".
Did you know? The surveyor Nain Singh, who visited in 1874–75, reported that the monastery governed itself through a council of its chief lamas called the Kato.
29 Phuktal Monastery
India33.268° N 77.180° E
This Photo was taken by Timothy A. Gonsalves . Feel free to use my photos, but please mention me as the author. I would much appreciate if you send me an email tagooty@yahoo.com or write on my talk page , for my information. Please contact me before commercial use. Please do not upload an edited image here without consulting me. I would like to make corrections only at my own source to ensure that the changes improve the image and are preserved. Otherwise you may upload an edited image with a new name. Please use one of the templates derivative or extract . · CC BY-SA 4.0 Tradition holds that the cave sheltered sages and translators for many centuries before any monastery was built, among them Padmasambhava and Marpa Lotsawa, and images of the Sixteen Arhats, the legendary disciples of the Buddha, appear on its walls. In the twelfth century the Tibetan translator Phagpa Sherab of Zanskar worked here.
Did you know? On 31 December 2014 a landslide dammed the Tsarap River below Phuktal, creating a lake that only broke through in May 2015.
30 Ibrahim Rouza
India · 1.3 km from Vijayapura16.827° N 75.702° E
Akshatha · CC BY-SA 3.0 The complex was completed in 1036 AH (1626–27) after more than eight years of work. It is named after Sultan Ibrahim Adil Shah II, the great patron under whom Bijapur reached its artistic and economic peak, and he is buried here, but Persian inscriptions on the walls show that it was commissioned by his wife, Taj Sultana, perhaps originally as her own tomb.
Did you know? According to tradition, the entire text of the Quran is inscribed across the four outer walls of the burial chamber.
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 in India?
- On our list, Konark Sun Temple ranks first, followed by Harmandir Sahib and Lotus Temple.
- Where did the Buddha attain enlightenment?
- According to Buddhist tradition, Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment under a bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya in Bihar. The Mahabodhi Temple stands on the spot, beside a descendant of the original tree, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- Why is the Konark Sun Temple shaped like a chariot?
- The thirteenth-century temple was dedicated to Surya, the Hindu sun god, who was imagined crossing the sky in a chariot. Its builders gave it twenty-four carved stone wheels and a team of stone horses, so the whole temple reads as the god's vehicle.
- What inspired the design of the Taj Mahal?
- The Taj Mahal draws on earlier Mughal tombs, above all Humayun's Tomb in Delhi, the first great garden tomb on the subcontinent, which combined a domed mausoleum with a formal Persian-style garden. Shah Jahan's architects refined that model and built it in white marble.
- How many sacred places are on this list in India?
- The list covers 32 sacred places.