The Most Beautiful Squares Seen on Screen in the World
5 places in 4 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful squares seen on screen in the world are Place de la Concorde (France), Saint Peter's Square (Vatican City) and Place des Vosges (France). The list covers 5 squares seen on screen in 4 countries. France has the most, with 2. Last updated 14 October 2026.
A great square is already a stage: a framed open space with a backdrop of facades, a single focal point and room for crowds. That is why directors keep returning to them. A camera placed at one edge gets a complete composition, centuries of history behind the actors, and a place audiences recognise in a single shot, which is exactly what a city scene needs.
The Place de la Concorde in Paris, laid out in the 18th century, saw the guillotine during the Revolution and now centres on an Egyptian obelisk from Luxor more than 3,000 years old. Saint Peter's Square in the Vatican is Bernini's work of the 1650s and 1660s, two curved colonnades that open like arms around another obelisk. The Place des Vosges, inaugurated in 1612 as the Place Royale, is Paris's oldest planned square, a perfect ring of red brick and stone houses over arcades.
The Grand-Place in Brussels is a different kind of set: a Gothic town hall facing guild houses rebuilt in exuberant Baroque after the French bombardment of 1695. Red Square in Moscow closes the range with the coloured domes of St Basil's Cathedral at one end and the Kremlin wall along its side, a backdrop instantly read on screen.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Place de la Concorde | Square | France | |
| 2 | Saint Peter's Square | Square | Vatican City | |
| 3 | Place des Vosges | Square | France | |
| 4 | Grand-Place | Square | Belgium | ✓ |
| 5 | Red Square | Square | Russia | ✓ |
01 Place de la Concorde
France · 2.5 km from Paris48.866° N 2.321° E
Image by westcoast_dave from Pixabay 6 hectares of open ground at the eastern end of the Champs-Élysées, between the Tuileries Garden and the Seine. It began as a royal flattery. In 1748 the merchants of Paris commissioned an equestrian statue of Louis XV to celebrate his recovery from illness, and the architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel laid out an octagonal square around it, finished by 1772 and ringed with a dry moat and balustrades.
02 Saint Peter's Square
Piazza San Pietro
Vatican City · 2.1 km from Rome41.902° N 12.457° E
Diliff · CC BY-SA 3.0 St. Peter's Square is the great forecourt of St. Peter's Basilica, and one of the most successful pieces of urban theatre ever made. Gian Lorenzo Bernini designed it between 1667 and 1676 for Pope Alexander VII, with a simple brief: as many people as possible should be able to see the pope give his blessing, from the basilica facade or from a window of the Vatican Palace.
Did you know? Two marble discs marked "Centro del colonnato" lie between the obelisk and the fountains; from either one, the four rows of columns line up and appear as a single row.
03 Place des Vosges
France · 1 km from Paris48.856° N 2.366° E
Image by beanitwoman from Pixabay The Place des Vosges is the oldest planned square in Paris and still one of the most perfect: a square exactly 140 metres a side, closed on all four sides by houses of the same design, with a formal garden of lawns, gravel and clipped trees in the middle.
Did you know? The square stands on the site of the Hôtel des Tournelles, where King Henri II was mortally wounded in the eye by a lance during a joust in 1559.
04 Grand-Place
Belgium · 2 km from Brussels50.847° N 4.353° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by dimitrisvetsikas1969 from Pixabay The Grand-Place, or Grote Markt in Dutch, is the central square of Brussels, and no other square in Europe is so completely enclosed by ornate buildings. It is a fully paved rectangle of about 68 by 110 m, surrounded on all sides by gilded guildhalls, a Gothic town hall and the neo-Gothic King's House.
Did you know? Jan van Essen and Hendrik Vos, the first martyrs of the Protestant Reformation, were burned at the stake on the square in 1523.
05 Red Square
Russia · 0.4 km from Moscow55.754° N 37.620° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by joneybrain from Pixabay Red Square is a long rectangle — about 330 metres from end to end — laid along the eastern wall of the Moscow Kremlin, where the fortress had no river to protect it. That weakness is the square's origin: in the 1490s Ivan III ordered the ground outside the wall cleared of buildings to open a field of fire, and a deep moat was dug in front of the wall in the early sixteenth century.
Did you know? The square covers about 73,000 square metres, some 330 metres long and roughly 70 metres wide.
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 seen on screen in the world?
- On our list, Place de la Concorde (France) ranks first, followed by Saint Peter's Square (Vatican City) and Place des Vosges (France).
- Which country has the most squares seen on screen in the world?
- In our collection, the most come from France (2), Belgium (1) and Russia (1).
- Why is Red Square called red?
- The name comes from the Russian word krasnaya, which in older usage meant beautiful as well as red. It was applied to the square in the 17th century and has nothing to do with the colour of the bricks or later politics.
- Who designed Saint Peter's Square?
- Gian Lorenzo Bernini designed it between 1656 and 1667. His oval of colonnades, four columns deep, was meant to embrace the faithful arriving at the basilica.
- Where was Louis XVI executed?
- Louis XVI was guillotined in 1793 on what is now the Place de la Concorde, then called the Place de la Révolution. Marie Antoinette was executed there later the same year.
- How many squares seen on screen are on this list in the world?
- The list covers 5 squares seen on screen in 4 countries. France has the most, with 2.