The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments in France
16 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful squares, streets and monuments in France are Place de la Concorde, Eiffel Tower and Aiguille du Midi. The list covers 16 squares, streets and monuments. Last updated 14 October 2026.
France composed its towns as stages. Roman colonies in Provence left triumphal arches, the absolute monarchy and its dukes laid out royal squares framed by uniform façades, 19th-century Paris roofed its shopping streets with glass, and the Third Republic built the Eiffel Tower to show what iron could do. In the north and east, the battlefields of the First World War left some of the most solemn memorials in Europe.
The Triumphal Arch of Orange, from the reign of Augustus, still carries reliefs of battles and captives. In Paris the Place des Vosges, inaugurated in 1612, set the model for the planned square with its red-brick pavilions, while the Galerie Vivienne, a covered passage of 1823, keeps mosaic floors under its glass roof. Place Stanislas in Nancy is closed by gilded wrought-iron gates by Jean Lamour, and the Place de la Bourse in Bordeaux now doubles itself in a shallow water mirror on the quay. The Eiffel Tower and Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe complete the capital's skyline.
The memorials of the Western Front bear the names of the missing. The Douaumont Ossuary at Verdun holds the bones of unidentified soldiers of both sides; Edwin Lutyens's Thiepval Memorial on the Somme lists more than 72,000 British and Commonwealth names; and the twin white pylons of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial crown the ridge Canada took in 1917. Elsewhere the views take over: the Aiguille du Midi faces Mont Blanc from above Chamonix, and the King of Aragon's Staircase drops down the limestone cliff of Bonifacio to the sea.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Place de la Concorde | Square | |
| 2 | Eiffel Tower | Observation tower | ✓ |
| 3 | Aiguille du Midi | Scenic viewpoint | |
| 4 | Triumphal Arch of Orange | Triumphal arch | ✓ |
| 5 | Douaumont Ossuary | War memorial | |
| 6 | Galerie Vivienne | Covered passageway | |
| 7 | Panthéon | Monument | |
| 8 | Place Vendôme | Square | |
| 9 | Place Stanislas, Nancy | Square | ✓ |
| 10 | Place des Vosges | Square | |
| 11 | Arc de Triomphe | Triumphal arch | |
| 12 | Canadian National Vimy Memorial | War memorial | |
| 13 | King of Aragon's Staircase, Bonifacio | Stairs | |
| 14 | Thiepval Memorial | War memorial | |
| 15 | Place de la Bourse | Square | |
| 16 | Passage Pommeraye | Covered passageway |
01 Place de la Concorde
France · 2.5 km from Paris48.866° N 2.321° E
Image by westcoast_dave from Pixabay The Revolution gave the square its darkest chapter. The king's statue was pulled down in 1792 and melted, the square was renamed Place de la Révolution, and the guillotine was set up here. Louis XVI was executed on the square in January 1793 and Marie Antoinette that October; Danton, Lavoisier and Robespierre followed. Of about 2,500 people guillotined in Paris during the Revolution, some 1,100 died here.
02 Eiffel Tower
Tour Eiffel
France · 4.3 km from Paris48.858° N 2.294° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by TheDigitalArtist from Pixabay What made the design work — visually, not structurally — was a third man: architect Stephen Sauvestre, brought in to soften the raw lattice engineering into something the public might actually love.
Did you know? It was the tallest human-made structure on Earth for 41 years, until New York's Chrysler Building was completed in 1930.
03 Aiguille du Midi
France · 36.8 km from Aosta45.879° N 6.888° E
Image by Simon from Pixabay The cable car that makes this possible was first proposed around 1909 but did not open until 1955, when it was the highest cable car in the world, a title it held for about two decades. It still has the greatest vertical rise of any cable car: from Chamonix at 1,035 metres to the top station at 3,777 metres, the rest of the way to the summit by lift.
Did you know? At its opening its upper section, about 3 kilometres without a single pylon, made it the highest and longest cable car in the world.
04 Triumphal Arch of Orange
Arc antique d'Orange
France44.142° N 4.805° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Xavier D'ABRIGEON · CC BY-SA 4.0 Its date is still debated. Current research that accepts the evidence of its inscription places it in the reign of Augustus, built to honour the veterans of the Gallic Wars and the Second Legion; it was later rededicated under Tiberius to celebrate the victories of Germanicus on the Rhine, with an inscription to the emperor in AD 27.
Did you know? A single bronze letter L from the lost dedication was found in the 19th century and then mislaid; only the fixing holes survive.
05 Douaumont Ossuary
Ossuaire de Douaumont
France49.208° N 5.424° E
Image by Signalschwarz from Pixabay The idea came from Charles Ginisty, Bishop of Verdun, who wanted a resting place for the remains that were being found across the battlefield in the years after the war. The building was designed by the architects Léon Azéma, Max Edrei and Jacques Hardy and inaugurated on 7 August 1932 by President Albert Lebrun.
Did you know? Before the permanent monument, a wooden hut served as a provisional ossuary on the battlefield from 1919.
06 Galerie Vivienne
France · 1.4 km from Paris48.867° N 2.340° E
Mbzt · CC BY 3.0 It was built in 1823 for Marchoux, president of the Chamber of Notaries, on the site of an old town house, to plans by the architect Delannoy, and opened in 1826 under its founder's name before taking the name of the street it opens onto.
Did you know? The floor and reliefs use emblems of commerce such as caducei, anchors, cornucopias, laurel wreaths and sheaves of wheat.
07 Panthéon
France · 1.4 km from Paris48.846° N 2.346° E
Image by ChiemSeherin from Pixabay The building is an early and very pure statement of Neoclassicism: a Greek-cross plan, a portico of Corinthian columns copied from a temple, and a stone dome meant to rival St Peter's in Rome and St Paul's in London. It is 110 metres long and 83 metres high, and the dome is really three shells fitted one inside another; through the opening in the lowest you see Antoine-Jean Gros's painted Apotheosis of Saint Genevieve on the second.
08 Place Vendôme
France · 2 km from Paris48.867° N 2.329° E
Duplessi-Bertaux, Jean (1747-1818) · CC0 At its centre stood François Girardon's equestrian statue of Louis XIV, unveiled in 1699 and believed to be the first large modern equestrian statue cast in one piece; the Revolution pulled it down in 1792. Napoleon replaced it between 1806 and 1810 with the Vendôme Column, about 44 metres high, wrapped in a spiral of 425 bronze relief plates cast from cannon captured from the armies of Europe. It has had a life of its own.
09 Place Stanislas, Nancy
France · 1.7 km from Nancy48.694° N 6.183° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Nicolas Cornet · CC BY-SA 4.0 Its patron was Stanisław Leszczyński, twice-deposed king of Poland, who was given the duchies of Lorraine and Bar for life in 1737 and whose daughter was married to Louis XV of France. The square was his homage to his son-in-law, and a statue of Louis XV stood at its centre until the Revolution pulled it down. Since 1831 the plinth has carried a bronze of Stanislas himself by Georges Jacquot.
Did you know? After dark on inauguration day, casks of wine were set out by the fountains for the townspeople, while rain postponed the closing fireworks.
10 Place des Vosges
France · 1 km from Paris48.856° N 2.366° E
Image by beanitwoman from Pixabay The architecture is what makes the square sing. The facades are of red brick framed by pale stone quoins, above ground-floor arcades carried on square pillars, and topped with steep slate roofs pierced by dormers. The uniformity is broken only by two taller pavilions facing each other across the garden — the Pavillon du Roi and the Pavillon de la Reine.
Did you know? The open centre was once a venue for duels, and the Count of Montmorency-Bouteville fought a famous one here in 1627 in defiance of a royal ban.
11 Arc de Triomphe
Arc de triomphe de l'Étoile
France · 4.6 km from Paris48.874° N 2.295° E
ZeusUpsistos · CC BY-SA 4.0 Napoleon ordered the arch in 1806, after Austerlitz, to honour the armies of the Revolution and the Empire. Jean-François Chalgrin designed it on the model of the Arch of Titus in Rome, but the foundations alone took two years, Chalgrin died in 1811, and work stalled under the restored Bourbons. It was finally finished under Louis-Philippe and inaugurated in 1836.
Did you know? The Unknown Soldier was originally meant to rest in the Panthéon, but a public letter-writing campaign brought him to the arch instead.
12 Canadian National Vimy Memorial
Mémorial national du Canada à Vimy
France · 10.7 km from Arras50.379° N 2.774° E
Jean-Pol GRANDMONT · CC BY 4.0 The Battle of Vimy Ridge began on Easter Monday, 9 April 1917, the first time all four divisions of the Canadian Corps attacked together. The memorial was designed by the Toronto sculptor Walter Seymour Allward, took eleven years to build from 1925, and was unveiled by King Edward VIII on 26 July 1936 before a crowd of more than 50,000.
Did you know? The names of the missing run in continuous bands across the stone joints, so men whose remains were later identified could not be removed from the list.
13 King of Aragon's Staircase, Bonifacio
Escalier du roi d'Aragon
France41.386° N 9.156° E
Myrabella · CC BY-SA 3.0 The name comes from a story rather than from its builders. In 1420 King Alfonso V of Aragon laid siege to Bonifacio for five months, pressing a claim to Corsica based on old papal grants to his family. Local legend holds that his soldiers carved the whole stairway in a single night to take the town by surprise, and were beaten back at the top.
Did you know? The town above sits on a raised plateau of Neogene limestone roughly 60 to 80 metres high, deeply cut by fissures and small valleys.
14 Thiepval Memorial
Mémorial de Thiepval
France · 26.8 km from Arras50.051° N 2.686° E
Amanda Slater , from Coventry (England) · CC BY-SA 2.0 The memorial was built between 1928 and 1932 and unveiled on 1 August 1932 by the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VIII, in the presence of the French president Albert Lebrun. It rises about 140 feet above its podium. The structure stands on sixteen brick piers faced with Portland stone, and on the stone faces of these piers the names are cut, regiment by regiment, in panel after panel.
Did you know? Sixteen carved stone laurel wreaths name the actions in which the men fell, from Delville Wood and High Wood to Thiepval Ridge.
15 Place de la Bourse
France · 2.4 km from Bordeaux44.841° N 0.570° W
Image by JonathanRieder from Pixabay The idea came from Claude Boucher, the royal intendant appointed in 1720, who wanted to break through the city's decaying medieval walls and give Bordeaux a dignified face towards the river. Some twenty houses and ten stalls were cleared and about 150 metres of rampart came down.
Did you know? The fountain designer Jean-Max Llorca created the mirror with landscape architect Michel Corajoud and architect Pierre Gangnet; it was built between May 2005 and July 2006.
16 Passage Pommeraye
France · 2.3 km from Nantes47.213° N 1.560° W
Julien Thibault · CC BY-SA 3.0 Instead of a single level corridor, the Passage Pommeraye stacks three galleries around a monumental central staircase, so the visitor descends through the building as if through a theatre set. Light pours in through glass roofs carried on cast-iron arches; the balustrades and ironwork came from the local Voruz foundry.
Did you know? The arcade runs about 134 metres and rises some 20 metres from floor to glass roof.
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 squares, streets and monuments in France?
- On our list, Place de la Concorde ranks first, followed by Eiffel Tower and Aiguille du Midi.
- What is the oldest square in Paris?
- The Place des Vosges, inaugurated in 1612 as the Place Royale, is the oldest planned square in Paris. Its arcaded brick and stone pavilions set a pattern for later European squares.
- How many steps does the King of Aragon's Staircase have?
- The staircase in Bonifacio, Corsica, has 187 steps cut diagonally into the limestone cliff. Legend says Aragonese troops carved it in a single night during the siege of 1420.
- What is the Douaumont Ossuary?
- It is a memorial on the battlefield of Verdun that holds the skeletal remains of around 130,000 unidentified French and German soldiers. Its long vault and central tower stand over a large French military cemetery.
- How many squares, streets and monuments are on this list in France?
- The list covers 16 squares, streets and monuments.