The Most Beautiful Squares in Asia
6 places in 4 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful squares in Asia are Patan Durbar Square (Nepal), Red Square (Russia) and Naqsh-e Jahan Square (Iran). The list covers 6 squares in 4 countries. Nepal has the most, with 2. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Squares have long been the stage of public life across Asia, but they take very different forms. In the Kathmandu Valley, royal palaces and tiered temples crowd together in the Durbar squares of the Newar cities; in Persia and Central Asia, rulers laid out vast open spaces framed by tiled mosques and madrasas; and in Russia, the great squares of Moscow and St Petersburg were shaped by fortress walls and imperial palaces. Each reflects the society and faith that built it.
Patan Durbar Square, in the old city of Lalitpur, is lined with Newar temples and the courtyards of the Malla palace, among them the stone Krishna Mandir. Bhaktapur Durbar Square gathers the palace of fifty-five windows, the gilded Golden Gate and temples in stone and brick. Naqsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan, laid out under Shah Abbas I in the early seventeenth century, is one of the largest squares in the world, enclosed by the Shah Mosque, the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, the Ali Qapu palace and the bazaar.
In Samarkand, the Registan is framed on three sides by tiled madrasas, those of Ulugh Beg, Sher-Dor and Tilya-Kori, facing each other across the square. Red Square in Moscow runs along the Kremlin wall to the coloured domes of St Basil's Cathedral. And Palace Square in St Petersburg spreads before the green-and-white Winter Palace, with the Alexander Column at its centre and the arch of the General Staff Building curving opposite.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Patan Durbar Square | Square | Nepal | |
| 2 | Red Square | Square | Russia | ✓ |
| 3 | Naqsh-e Jahan Square | Square | Iran | ✓ |
| 4 | Registan | Square | Uzbekistan | ✓ |
| 5 | Palace Square | Square | Russia | ✓ |
| 6 | Bhaktapur Durbar Square | Square | Nepal |
01 Patan Durbar Square
Nepal · 1 km from Lalitpur27.673° N 85.326° E
Image by 10914001 from Pixabay Look first at the Krishna Mandir, built in the seventeenth century under Siddhi Narsingh Malla. Unlike the pagoda roofs around it, it is a stone temple in the shikhara style, a cluster of small pavilions climbing to a central spire, and the friezes along its upper storeys narrate scenes from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana in tiny carved figures. Then compare the tiered Newar temples: the Bhimsen temple with its three gilded windows, the Vishwanath temple of Shiva with its carved roof struts, the five-storeyed Taleju temple of the royal goddess. Everywhere the craft is in the detail — latticed windows, struts carved with deities, bells and stone guardians.
Did you know? The Krishna Mandir carries 21 golden pinnacles, and its upper floors are dedicated to Shiva and to the Buddhist bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara.
02 Red Square
Russia · 0.4 km from Moscow55.754° N 37.620° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by joneybrain from Pixabay Almost every building around it is a landmark in its own right. At the southern end, Saint Basil's Cathedral — the Intercession on the Moat — was built in 1555–1561 for Ivan the Terrible to mark the capture of Kazan, a cluster of chapels crowned by nine onion domes whose bright colours came later, in the seventeenth century. Along the Kremlin wall stands Lenin's Mausoleum, Alexey Shchusev's stepped design, with the Spasskaya Tower and its tent roof and clock behind. Opposite, the upper trading rows of 1888–1893, now the GUM department store, and at the northern end the State Historical Museum, both in the late-nineteenth-century Russian Revival manner.
Did you know? The moat dug along the Kremlin wall in 1508–1516 was about 541 metres long, 36 metres wide and up to 13 metres deep.
03 Naqsh-e Jahan Square
Iran · 5.2 km from Isfahan32.658° N 51.677° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Amir Pashaei · CC BY-SA 4.0 Each side holds something different. To the south stands the Shah Mosque, the vast Friday mosque with the largest dome in the city; its entrance faces the square, but the building behind it swings round at an angle to face Mecca, a turn you make almost without noticing as you pass through the portal. On the east side is the smaller Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, the first of the four to be built and intended as the royal court's private mosque. Opposite it rises the Ali Qapu, the palace gateway from whose high terrace the shahs watched polo, parades and horse races on the square below; its top floor, the "music room", is lined with stucco cut into the shapes of cups and vessels.
Did you know? The square's splendour fed the Persian saying 'Isfahan is half the world'.
04 Registan
Uzbekistan · 3.1 km from Samarkand39.655° N 66.976° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Bernard Gagnon · CC0 The oldest of the three buildings, on the western side, is the madrasa of Ulugh Beg, raised between 1417 and 1420 by Timur's grandson, the ruler-astronomer who is said to have lectured there himself. Its great arched portal is covered with geometric ornament in glazed brick and mosaic, and in the fifteenth century it counted among the leading places of learning in the Muslim East. Two centuries later the Uzbek governor Yalangtush Bahadur added the Sher-Dor madrasa directly opposite, built between 1619 and 1636 as a near-mirror of its older neighbour.
Did you know? The portal of the Ulugh Beg madrasa is studded with tile stars, a nod to its founder's passion for astronomy.
05 Palace Square
Russia · 0.2 km from Saint Petersburg59.939° N 30.315° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
W. Bulach · CC BY-SA 4.0 In the middle rises the Alexander Column, designed by Auguste de Montferrand and raised between 1830 and 1834: a single shaft of red granite 47.5 metres tall and weighing some 500 tons, standing on its base by its own weight without any fixings. Despite the century that separates palace and arch, the Neoclassical buildings match the Baroque palace in height and rhythm, and the result is one of the most coherent grand squares in Europe.
Did you know? In autumn 1941 planners considered turning the square into an airfield for a fighter regiment, which would have meant moving the Alexander Column.
06 Bhaktapur Durbar Square
Nepal · 9.4 km from Lalitpur27.672° N 85.428° E
Bikram Pratap Singh · CC BY-SA 3.0 Much of what survives was shaped by Bhupatindra Malla, who ruled from 1696 to 1722 and whose gilt bronze statue, seated with palms joined in homage to the goddess Taleju, sits on a stone column in front of the palace. The Palace of Fifty-five Windows, completed in 1708 on the site of an older building wrecked by an earthquake in 1681, has kept its facade almost unaltered; a band of 147 small carvings of musical ragas runs along the cornice above its ground floor. Beside it, the gilded Golden Gate, made between 1751 and 1754, leads into the inner courtyards and the shrine of Taleju, the tutelary goddess of the Malla dynasty.
Did you know? A bell near the Vatsala temple is nicknamed the barking bell, because its ringing is said to set the local dogs barking.
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 in Asia?
- On our list, Patan Durbar Square (Nepal) ranks first, followed by Red Square (Russia) and Naqsh-e Jahan Square (Iran).
- Which country has the most squares in Asia?
- In our collection, the most come from Nepal (2), Russia (2) and Iran (1).
- Why is Red Square called red?
- The name comes from the old Russian word krasnaya, which meant 'beautiful' as well as 'red'. It originally referred to the area near St Basil's Cathedral and was later applied to the whole square.
- What does Registan mean?
- Registan means 'sandy place' in Persian. The square was the commercial and public centre of Samarkand long before its three madrasas were built in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries.
- What is a Durbar Square?
- In Nepal, a durbar square is the square in front of a royal palace. The three old kingdoms of the Kathmandu Valley, Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur, each have one, filled with temples and palace courtyards.
- How many squares are on this list in Asia?
- The list covers 6 squares in 4 countries. Nepal has the most, with 2.