The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments in India
6 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful squares, streets and monuments in India are Gateway of India, Qutb complex and Taj Mahal. The list covers 6 squares, streets and monuments. Last updated 13 October 2026.
India's monuments are layered by dynasty and faith over more than a thousand years. Hindu kingdoms turned the practical need to reach groundwater in a dry climate into the art of the stepwell; the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals brought domes, minarets, calligraphy and inlaid marble; and British rule left ceremonial arches that mixed European classicism with Indian forms. Few countries can set such different traditions so close together.
The Taj Mahal in Agra, built by Shah Jahan in memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, is a white marble mausoleum inlaid with semi-precious stones and set at the end of a formal garden on the Yamuna. In Delhi, the Qutb complex rises around the Qutb Minar, a fluted tower of red sandstone begun around 1200, which stands beside an iron pillar from the Gupta era that has resisted rust for centuries. Rani ki Vav in Patan, an eleventh-century stepwell built by a queen in memory of her husband, descends through seven levels lined with hundreds of carved deities.
The Chand Baori at Abhaneri in Rajasthan works the same idea into pure geometry, with thousands of narrow steps zigzagging down the walls of a deep square well. The colonial era closes the story: the Gateway of India in Mumbai, a basalt arch on the waterfront completed in 1924, and India Gate in Delhi, designed by Edwin Lutyens as a memorial to Indian soldiers who died in the First World War.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gateway of India | Triumphal arch | |
| 2 | Qutb complex | Archaeological site | ✓ |
| 3 | Taj Mahal | Mausoleum | ✓ |
| 4 | Rani ki Vav | Stepwell | |
| 5 | India Gate | War memorial | |
| 6 | Chand Baori | Stepwell |
01 Gateway of India
India · 16.8 km from Mumbai18.922° N 72.835° E
Image by prabhdeep567 from Pixabay Architect George Wittet designed it in the Indo-Saracenic style, deliberately fusing Gothic structural bones with Hindu- and Islamic-derived surface ornament — a visual argument, intentional or not, about what British rule in India was supposed to look like. It took until 1924 to complete, using yellow basalt quarried locally and reinforced concrete, with a central dome rising 26 metres on four turrets.
Did you know? The central dome measures about 15 metres across, and halls on either side of the arch can each hold around 600 people.
02 Qutb complex
India · 8.5 km from New Delhi28.524° N 77.185° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by SuanlianTangpua from Pixabay At its foot stands the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque, the first mosque built in Delhi after the conquest, begun in 1193 inside the captured Rajput citadel. Its inscriptions record that it was assembled from the material of 27 Hindu and Jain temples, and many columns of its colonnades are reused temple pillars that still carry Hindu carving.
Did you know? After an 1803 earthquake, Major Robert Smith crowned the minar with a pillared cupola; it was removed in 1848 and now stands on the lawn as Smith's Folly.
03 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.
04 Rani ki Vav
India23.859° N 72.102° E
Kshitij Charania · CC BY-SA 4.0 It is attributed to Udayamati, the queen of the eleventh-century Chaulukya king Bhima I. A medieval chronicle places its commissioning in 1063 and says it took about twenty years to complete, though scholars disagree about the dates. Architecturally it belongs to the Maru-Gurjara style, built on an interlocking system of pillars, brackets and beams — 212 pillars in all.
Did you know? The stepwell creates its own microclimate: warm air cools against the stone and water, keeping the lower levels cool and slowing evaporation.
05 India Gate
India · 3.2 km from New Delhi28.613° N 77.229° E
Image by shalender from Pixabay The designer was Edwin Lutyens, the principal architect of New Delhi and a member of the Imperial War Graves Commission, whose Cenotaph in London had set the tone for secular remembrance after 1918. India Gate follows the same idea: no crosses or religious symbols, only mass, proportion and inscription.
Did you know? The avenue leading to the gate was laid out as Kingsway, became Rajpath after independence and was renamed Kartavya Path, the 'Path of Duty', in September 2022.
06 Chand Baori
India27.007° N 76.606° E
Chainwit. · CC BY-SA 4.0 Stepwells were the answer of dry western India to a hard problem — how to reach water whose level swung wildly between monsoon and drought. Rather than lower a bucket, you walked down to it, and the deep shaded well also stayed several degrees cooler than the air above, making it a place to gather in summer heat.
Did you know? Besides The Fall, the well has served as a location for Indian films including Paheli, Bhool Bhulaiyaa and Bhoomi.
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 India?
- On our list, Gateway of India ranks first, followed by Qutb complex and Taj Mahal.
- What is a stepwell?
- A stepwell is a well or reservoir reached by flights of steps descending to the water, built across western India to give access to groundwater as its level rose and fell with the seasons. Many, like Rani ki Vav and Chand Baori, were also elaborate works of architecture and places of worship.
- Why doesn't the iron pillar at the Qutb complex rust?
- The pillar, made in the Gupta period about 1,600 years ago, contains a high level of phosphorus. Over time this has helped form a thin protective layer on its surface that slows corrosion.
- Why was the Gateway of India built?
- It was built to commemorate the landing of King George V and Queen Mary in Bombay in 1911. Completed in 1924 to a design by George Wittet, it later saw the last British troops leave India in 1948.
- How many squares, streets and monuments are on this list in India?
- The list covers 6 squares, streets and monuments.