The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Castles, Palaces and Fortresses in the World

92 places in 37 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Schönbrunn Palace

   Schloss Schönbrunn

   Austria · 4.3 km from Vienna48.185° N 16.312° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Schönbrunn was the summer residence of the Habsburgs, and it grew from a hunting ground. Emperor Maximilian II bought the floodplain of the Wien river in 1569 and stocked it with game; Eleonora Gonzaga added a palace in the 1640s, and the name, from a "beautiful spring" whose water was drunk at court, first appears in 1642.

   Did you know? In 1786 the Orangery hosted an imperial musical duel: Mozart's Der Schauspieldirektor and Salieri's Prima la musica e poi le parole were performed at opposite ends of the hall.

   More about Schönbrunn Palace →

2. 02 Krak des Chevaliers

   Syria · 38.9 km from Homs34.757° N 36.295° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Krak des Chevaliers sits on a 650-metre spur at the southern end of Syria's coastal mountains, watching over the Homs Gap, the one easy corridor between the port of Tripoli and the inland city of Homs. The site was already fortified in 1031, when the Mirdasid emir of Aleppo stationed Kurdish troops here, which is why Arabic sources still call it Hisn al-Akrad, the fort of the Kurds.

   Did you know? T. E. Lawrence judged it possibly the best-preserved and most admirable castle anywhere in the world.

   More about Krak des Chevaliers →

3. 03 Tower of Hercules

   Torre de Hércules

   Spain · 6.3 km from A Coruña43.386° N 8.406° W

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   There were dozens of lighthouses like this one once, scattered around the edges of the Roman world. There is exactly one left that still works.

   Did you know? The 18th-century restoration was carried out by the naval engineer Eustaquio Giannini, and UNESCO later singled it out as exemplary for protecting the Roman core.

   More about Tower of Hercules →

4. 04 Diocletian's Palace

   Dioklecijanova palača

   Croatia · 2.9 km from Split43.508° N 16.438° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Diocletian, the emperor who divided power among four rulers and then did something rare for a Roman emperor — abdicated, in 305 — chose a peninsula on the Dalmatian coast for his retirement, a few kilometres from Salona, the provincial capital.

   Did you know? According to ancient sources, when asked to return to power Diocletian replied that anyone who saw the cabbages he grew would never suggest it.

   More about Diocletian's Palace →

5. 05 Palace of the Shirvanshahs

   Azerbaijan · 4.1 km from Baku40.366° N 49.833° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The Palace of the Shirvanshahs crowns the highest point of Baku's walled Old City, a compact ensemble of stone buildings from the fifteenth century. The Shirvanshahs were the long-lived dynasty of Shirvan, and under Ibrahim I they moved their capital to Baku after an earthquake devastated their old seat at Shamakhi.

   Did you know? The main palace building originally had 52 rooms, 27 on the ground floor and 25 above, linked by three narrow spiral staircases.

   More about Palace of the Shirvanshahs →

6. 06 Palace of Versailles

   Château de Versailles

   France · 1.1 km from Versailles48.805° N 2.120° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Versailles began as a small brick-and-stone hunting lodge that Louis XIII built in 1623 amid marshes southwest of Paris, a building contemporaries mocked as a house of cards. His son turned it into the stage set of absolute monarchy.

   Did you know? Water was too scarce to run every fountain at once, so fountaineers whistled to each other as the king approached and shut each one off after he passed.

   More about Palace of Versailles →

7. 07 Spiš Castle

   Spišský hrad

   Slovakia · 34.5 km from Prešov49.001° N 20.768° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Spiš Castle covers almost the whole top of a travertine hill above the town of Spišské Podhradie and the village of Žehra. With about 4 hectares inside its walls, it is one of the largest castle sites in Central Europe. Seen from the road, the long white spread of ruined walls along the ridge looks more like a fortified town than a castle.

   Did you know? The castle's travertine hill rises about 200 metres above the countryside, with near-vertical cliffs 20 to 40 metres high.

   More about Spiš Castle →

8. 08 Sanssouci Palace

   Schloss Sanssouci

   Germany · 2.2 km from Potsdam52.403° N 13.039° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The name is the whole design brief: "sans souci," without a care, and Frederick the Great built exactly that — a single-storey retreat on a terraced vineyard hillside outside Potsdam, deliberately smaller and more intimate than the Baroque grandeur of Versailles it's often compared to.

   Did you know? The fountains Frederick planned for his gardens never worked in his lifetime; even with calculations by the mathematician Euler, the pumps failed and the project was abandoned in 1780.

   More about Sanssouci Palace →

9. 09 Holstentor

   Germany · 0.8 km from Lübeck53.866° N 10.680° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Two squat round towers with conical caps, a stepped gable between them and a single arch at their feet: the Holstentor is the image of Lübeck, and for a long time of the Hanseatic League itself. It was built between 1464 and 1478 by the city architect Hinrich Helmstede, funded by a councilman's legacy, as the middle of what eventually became four successive gates on the western road towards Holstein.

   Did you know? The gate stands on an artificial mound about seven metres high, and its south tower was already sinking into the marshy ground while the builders were still at work.

   More about Holstentor →

10. 10 Quinta da Regaleira

    Portugal · 23.1 km from Lisbon38.796° N 9.396° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Quinta da Regaleira is the most theatrical of Sintra's romantic estates — a four-hectare hillside of palace, chapel, woods, grottoes and shafts built as a riddle in stone.

    Did you know? Monteiro's library of about 30,000 volumes, weighing some 15 tonnes, was sold after his death and bought by the US Library of Congress between 1927 and 1929.

    More about Quinta da Regaleira →

11. 11 Alhambra

    Spain · 1.3 km from Granada37.176° N 3.588° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The name comes from the Arabic for "the red one" — al-qal'a al-hamra, the red fortress — most likely a reference to the reddish clay used in its outer walls, visible at dusk when the whole hilltop seems to glow.

    Did you know? Retreating from Granada in 1812, Napoleon's troops tried to blow up the whole Alhambra; eight towers fell before a Spanish soldier, José García, cut the remaining fuses.

    More about Alhambra →

12. 12 Forbidden City

    People's Republic of China · 1.6 km from Beijing39.916° N 116.391° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    For almost five centuries the Forbidden City was the physical centre of the Chinese state. The Yongle Emperor of the Ming dynasty began it in 1406, after moving the capital from Nanjing to Beijing, and the complex was ready by 1420; from then until 1912 twenty-four emperors, fourteen Ming and ten Qing, lived and ruled here.

    Did you know? The legend of 9,999 rooms is not borne out by surveys, which count about 8,886 bays of rooms.

    More about Forbidden City →

13. 13 Castel del Monte

    Italy · 26.1 km from Barletta41.085° N 16.271° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Seen from the surrounding countryside of northern Apulia, Castel del Monte looks less like a fortress than a stone crown set on a hilltop 540 metres up. Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily, had it built in the 1240s; a document of 1240 already orders work on it. What makes it unlike any other castle is its geometry.

    Did you know? The castle combines local limestone, red coral breccia and marble, and the limestone shifts from white to pinkish as the light changes through the day.

    More about Castel del Monte →

14. 14 Agra Fort

    India · 1.1 km from Agra27.180° N 78.021° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Agra Fort is the walled citadel from which the Mughal emperors ruled northern India for most of a century, and it is the key to understanding everything else in Agra, the Taj Mahal included. A fort stood on this bend of the Yamuna long before the Mughals, but the present one is essentially the creation of Akbar, who ordered the old brick stronghold rebuilt in 1565.

    Did you know? Jahangir ordered a golden Chain of Justice with 60 bells, stretched from the fort's Shah Burj to a post on the Yamuna bank, so petitioners could summon the emperor.

    More about Agra Fort →

15. 15 Tower of London

    United Kingdom · 3 km from London51.508° N 0.076° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Tower of London began as a statement of conquest. William the Conqueror founded it at the end of 1066, and the pale keep that gives the whole fortress its name, the White Tower, went up from 1078 as a deliberately overbearing presence above Saxon London and the river traffic of the Thames.

    Did you know? In 1252 King Haakon IV of Norway gave Henry III a polar bear, which Londoners watched fishing in the Thames on a long chain.

    More about Tower of London →

16. 16 Nesvizh Castle

    Нясвіжскі палацава-паркавы комплекс

    Belarus53.223° N 26.692° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Nesvizh Castle was the principal seat of the Radziwiłłs, the wealthiest magnate family of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and it is the grandest aristocratic residence surviving in Belarus. Its yellow Baroque ranges close around a courtyard entered through a gatehouse tower, with ponds and landscaped parkland around it.

    Did you know? Nesvizh had its own cannon foundry, the first in Belarus, which cast its first series of guns in 1576.

    More about Nesvizh Castle →

17. 17 Potala Palace

    People's Republic of China · 2.2 km from Lhasa29.658° N 91.117° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The hill the palace stands on has been sacred longer than the palace itself. Tradition holds that in 637, Songtsen Gampo — the Tibetan king credited with unifying the plateau — built the first palace on this outcrop, known as Marpo Ri, or the Red Hill, to mark his marriage to the Chinese princess Wencheng.

    Did you know? Copper was poured into the foundations to help the palace withstand earthquakes, and its sloping walls are about 5 metres thick at the base.

    More about Potala Palace →

18. 18 Belém Tower

    Torre de Belém

    Portugal · 7 km from Lisbon38.691° N 9.216° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Tower of Saint Vincent, as it was officially named, was built in the 1510s and finished in 1519 to guard the mouth of the Tagus, completing a ring of river defences first planned by King John II and carried out by Manuel I. It stood on a basalt outcrop just off the Lisbon shore, and ships returning from India passed beneath it before reaching the city.

    Did you know? For about 250 years, from 1580 to 1830, the dark vaults of the bastion served as a prison.

    More about Belém Tower →

19. 19 Imperial City of Hue

    Vietnam · 0.2 km from Huế16.469° N 107.578° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    When Nguyễn Phúc Ánh unified Vietnam in 1802 and took the name Gia Long, he chose Huế, the old seat of his family, as the capital, and set about building a court on the model of Beijing's Forbidden City inside a European-style fortress. The result is three enclosures, one inside the other, on the north bank of the Perfume River.

    Did you know? On the night of 5 July 1885, after a failed attack on the French, Emperor Hàm Nghi was spirited out of the citadel to lead a guerrilla resistance.

    More about Imperial City of Hue →

20. 20 Neuschwanstein Castle

    Schloss Neuschwanstein

    Germany47.557° N 10.749° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The name suggests a medieval stronghold; the building is closer to a 19th-century stage set with plumbing. Ludwig II commissioned it in 1868, right after the Austro-Prussian War had stripped Bavaria of real independence and left him a king with a crown but shrinking power — and what he built instead of political influence was a retreat modelled on the operas of Richard Wagner, whom he'd idolised since adolescence.

    Did you know? It was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in July 2025 together with three other palaces of Ludwig II.

    More about Neuschwanstein Castle →

21. 21 Amber Fort

    India · 8.1 km from Jaipur26.986° N 75.851° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Amber Fort — or Amer, after the town below it — was the seat of the Kachhwaha Rajput rulers until they moved to their newly planned city of Jaipur in 1727. The palace was begun under Raja Man Singh, expanded by Jai Singh I in the early 1600s, and extended further by his successors over the next 150 years.

    Did you know? A carved marble panel near the Mirror Palace hides a magic flower: covering parts of it by hand reveals seven motifs, including a cobra and a scorpion.

    More about Amber Fort →

22. 22 Citadel of Aleppo

    Syria · 3.7 km from Aleppo36.199° N 37.163° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Citadel of Aleppo is a walled palace-fortress on a huge oval mound in the middle of the old city of Aleppo, in northern Syria, and one of the oldest and largest castles in the world. People have used the hill since at least the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, when a temple of the storm god Hadad stood on it.

    Did you know? Wells cut into the citadel mound reach about 125 metres below the summit, and tunnels link the interior to its forward towers.

    More about Citadel of Aleppo →

23. 23 Masada

    Israel · 35 km from Hebron31.316° N 35.354° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Masada is a natural fortress: a flat-topped block of rock in the Judaean Desert whose sides drop about 400 m on the east towards the Dead Sea and some 90 m on the west. The summit plateau is roughly 550 m long and 270 m wide.

    Did you know? A 2,000-year-old date palm seed from the excavations was germinated into a living tree, nicknamed Methuselah, and it remains the oldest known germination from a seed.

    More about Masada →

24. 24 Topkapı Palace

    Turkey · 1 km from Istanbul41.013° N 28.984° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    For almost four centuries the Ottoman Empire was governed from a headland at the very tip of old Istanbul. Mehmed II began Topkapı Palace in 1459, a few years after taking Constantinople, on Seraglio Point, where the Golden Horn opens into the Bosphorus and both meet the Sea of Marmara.

    Did you know? The palace stands on the site of the acropolis of ancient Byzantion, and parts of its outer walls date back to Byzantine times.

    More about Topkapı Palace →

25. 25 Bab Bou Jeloud

    Morocco · 1.8 km from Fez34.062° N 4.984° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Bab Bou Jeloud is younger than it looks. The triple-arched gate that frames the western entrance to Fes el-Bali was built by the French colonial administration: the head of municipal services laid out plans for a new opening in the walls in December 1912, and the gate was completed in 1913.

    Did you know? The gate guards the western entrance to Fes el-Bali, the medieval medina inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981.

    More about Bab Bou Jeloud →

26. 26 Takht-e Soleyman

    Iran36.605° N 47.234° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Takht-e Soleyman, the "Throne of Solomon", is a walled royal sanctuary built around a small lake that wells up from the top of a hill in the uplands of north-western Iran. The hill itself was made by the water: a mineral-rich spring has spilled over its rim for ages, laying down limestone as it flows.

    Did you know? Adur Gushnasp is the only one of the three Great Fires of Sasanian Iran whose temple building has actually been found by archaeologists.

    More about Takht-e Soleyman →

27. 27 Walls of Ávila

    Muralla de Ávila

    Spain40.657° N 4.707° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The walls of Ávila wrap the whole of the old town in an unbroken ring of granite, and they are the reason the city looks, from the plain below, like an illumination in a medieval manuscript. Work on them traditionally begins in 1090, after the resettlement of the town, but most of what stands today dates from the 12th century, with later work into the 14th.

    Did you know? After Queen Joanna had a postern by the Dávila palace walled up in 1507, its lord opened a window there in 1542 inscribed "Where one door closes, another opens."

    More about Walls of Ávila →

28. 28 Porta Nigra

    Germany · 18.1 km from Grevenmacher49.760° N 6.644° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Porta Nigra is the only survivor of the four gates that once closed the roughly rectangular circuit of Roman Trier, and today it is one of the best-preserved Roman city gates north of the Alps. It was raised in the late second century, after about 170 AD, from large blocks of grey sandstone.

    Did you know? Tree-ring dating of timber from the city wall, published in 2018, fixed the start of construction at 170 AD, after estimates had ranged from the 2nd to the 4th century.

    More about Porta Nigra →

29. 29 Schwerin Castle

    Schweriner Schloss

    Germany · 1 km from Schwerin53.624° N 11.419° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Schwerin Castle rises from a small island between Lake Schwerin and the city's old town, a riot of gilded domes, turrets and towers, and it is often called the "Neuschwanstein of the North". The site has been fortified since at least 973, when the Slavic Obotrites had a stronghold here.

    Did you know? The palace appears on a German two-euro commemorative coin issued in 2007, when Mecklenburg-Vorpommern held the presidency of the Bundesrat.

    More about Schwerin Castle →

30. 30 Golestan Palace

    Iran · 0.7 km from Tehran35.680° N 51.420° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Golestan, the "Palace of Flowers", is what remains of the walled citadel around which Tehran grew into a capital. Its core goes back to the Safavid period, when Shah Tahmasp I built a fortified enclosure here in the sixteenth century and Abbas the Great later added a garden.

    Did you know? Between 1925 and 1945 much of the palace complex was demolished, as Reza Shah held that old royal buildings should not block a modern Tehran.

    More about Golestan Palace →