The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Palaces in the World

38 places in 18 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 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 →

3. 03 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 →

4. 04 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 →

5. 05 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 →

6. 06 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 →

7. 07 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 →

8. 08 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 →

9. 09 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 →

10. 10 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 →

11. 11 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 →

12. 12 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 →

13. 13 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 →

14. 14 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 →

15. 15 Bahia Palace

    Morocco · 2.2 km from Marrakesh31.622° N 7.982° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Bahia Palace is not one building but a sequence of them, grown over four decades the way a Marrakesh house grows: a garden here, a courtyard there, corridors bending to join them. That lack of a master plan is exactly what makes walking through it so rewarding.

    Did you know? The whole palace was built on a single level, possibly because Ba Ahmed was so stout that climbing stairs was difficult for him.

    More about Bahia Palace →

16. 16 Palau Güell

    Spain · 0.9 km from Barcelona41.379° N 2.174° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Before Gaudí became the architect of endless curves and biomorphic facades, he had to prove himself on a plot barely 18 by 22 metres wide, hemmed in on a narrow street in Barcelona's old quarter.

    Did you know? It was listed by UNESCO in 1984, among the first group of Gaudí's works to receive World Heritage status.

    More about Palau Güell →

17. 17 Summer Palace, Beijing

    People's Republic of China · 15.1 km from Beijing39.998° N 116.269° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Summer Palace is a landscape painting made with water, earth and timber. 9 square kilometres is Kunming Lake, a body of water dug by hand, and the spoil was heaped up to shape Longevity Hill, about 60 metres high, along its northern shore.

    Did you know? An imperial palace stood on this site as early as 1153, when the Jin dynasty built one here.

    More about Summer Palace, Beijing →

18. 18 Kroměříž Castle

    Czech Republic · 20.3 km from Zlín49.300° N 17.393° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    For centuries the small Moravian town of Kroměříž was the summer seat of the bishops — from 1777 archbishops — of Olomouc, and their residence here, together with two very different gardens, was listed as a World Heritage Site in 1998. UNESCO's reasoning is candid: the palace is a fine but typical princely residence; what is rare is the Baroque garden layout that survives around it almost intact.

    More about Kroměříž Castle →

19. 19 Palace of Fontainebleau

    Château de Fontainebleau

    France · 14.8 km from Melun48.402° N 2.701° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Fontainebleau is the palace where French kings lived for eight centuries, and it shows every one of them. It began as a hunting lodge in the forest, recorded under Louis VII in 1137, and nearly every ruler afterwards added a wing, a courtyard or a staircase, so that the buildings sprawl across several courts in a mix of styles that no single plan ever tidied up.

    Did you know? Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, consecrated the chapel of the royal castle here in 1169.

    More about Palace of Fontainebleau →

20. 20 Catherine Palace, Tsarskoye Selo

    Russia · 25.5 km from Saint Petersburg59.716° N 30.396° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Catherine Palace is the Russian Baroque at its most exuberant: a facade some 300 metres long, painted sky blue, lined with snow-white columns and pilasters, and crowned with gilded ornament on which almost 100 kg of gold was spent. It stands at Tsarskoye Selo, the imperial country estate south of St Petersburg, which Peter the Great gave to his wife, the future Catherine I, in 1710.

    Did you know? In 1773 Catherine the Great had the gilding on the north facade's stucco painted over in olive drab, ending the original glitter of the facade.

    More about Catherine Palace, Tsarskoye Selo →

21. 21 Palace of Shaki Khans

    Azerbaijan · 2.6 km from Shaki41.204° N 47.198° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Palace of Shaki Khans is a small two-storey pavilion inside the walls of the old fortress of Sheki, in the foothills of the Greater Caucasus in north-western Azerbaijan. It was the summer residence of the rulers of the Shaki Khanate and is usually dated to 1797, under Muhammad Husayn Khan Mushtaq. In 2019 the historic centre of Sheki, including the palace, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

    Did you know? Its date is debated: a 1946 article credited it to a Shiraz builder in 1790, yet Sheki celebrated the palace's 250th anniversary in 2012.

    More about Palace of Shaki Khans →

22. 22 Changdeokgung

    South Korea · 1.4 km from Seoul37.579° N 126.992° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Changdeokgung, the "Palace of Prospering Virtue", was meant to be the lesser of Seoul's royal residences, yet for much of the Joseon era it was the one the kings actually preferred. King Taejong ordered it in 1404 as a secondary palace, and the first buildings were ready in 1405.

    Did you know? Taejong, who founded the palace, spent most of the rest of his reign living here rather than in the official main palace, Gyeongbokgung.

    More about Changdeokgung →

23. 23 Aljafería

    Spain · 0.9 km from Zaragoza41.656° N 0.897° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Aljafería is the finest surviving building from the taifa kingdoms, the patchwork of Muslim states that followed the break-up of the Caliphate of Córdoba. It was raised in Zaragoza for Ahmad al-Muqtadir of the Banu Hud dynasty and largely finished between 1065 and 1081.

    Did you know? The palace's architect is known by name: a Slav called Zuhayr, recorded by a Zaragoza writer active in the late eleventh century.

    More about Aljafería →

24. 24 Chehel Sotun

    Iran · 5.5 km from Isfahan32.657° N 51.672° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Chehel Sotoun, the "Forty Columns", is a Safavid palace pavilion set in a walled garden in the centre of Isfahan, the city whose old boast was that it was "half the world".

    Did you know? Chehel Sotoun was entered on Iran's national heritage list in 1932, nearly eighty years before UNESCO recognition.

    More about Chehel Sotun →

25. 25 Herrenchiemsee Palace

    Neues Schloss Herrenchiemsee

    Germany · 20.2 km from Rosenheim47.860° N 12.402° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    On an island in the Chiemsee in southern Bavaria, King Ludwig II of Bavaria tried to build his own Versailles.

    Did you know? About 16.6 million marks were spent on Herrenchiemsee, more than Linderhof and Neuschwanstein together, pushing the royal finances close to bankruptcy.

    More about Herrenchiemsee Palace →

26. 26 Palais des Papes

    France · 39.1 km from Nîmes43.951° N 4.808° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    For most of the fourteenth century the centre of Western Christendom was not Rome but a rock above the Rhône. The papacy settled in Avignon in 1309, and over the following decades the popes turned an episcopal residence into the Palais des Papes, a fortress and court rolled into one and the largest Gothic palace in Europe, with some 15,000 square metres of floor space.

    Did you know? In June 1348 Pope Clement VI bought the city of Avignon itself from Queen Joanna I of Naples for 80,000 florins.

    More about Palais des Papes →

27. 27 Pena Palace

    Portugal · 22.3 km from Lisbon38.788° N 9.391° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Pena Palace looks like a dream that someone decided to build. From the woods above Sintra it rises on a rocky peak in a jumble of towers, domes, crenellations and terraces, painted in strong ochre yellow and deep red, with a clock tower, onion-topped turrets and battlements that seem to belong to five different countries at once.

    Did you know? A cross has marked the nearby High Cross, at 528 metres the highest point of the Sintra hills, since King John III first raised one in 1522.

    More about Pena Palace →

28. 28 Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial

    Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial

    Spain40.589° N 4.148° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    At the foot of Mount Abantos in the Sierra de Guadarrama, El Escorial rises as a single vast block of grey granite, some 224 by 153 metres, its long, almost unadorned walls broken only by rows of windows and corner towers. It is at once a monastery, a basilica, a royal palace, a royal burial place and a library, built in barely two decades, from 1563 to 1584, for King Philip II of Spain.

    Did you know? It is often called the largest Renaissance building in the world, and its size doubled from the first plan as Philip added new functions.

    More about Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial →

29. 29 Qusayr 'Amra

    Jordan31.802° N 36.587° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    From the road across the eastern Jordanian desert, Qusayr ʿAmra looks like almost nothing — a small, low building of limestone and basalt with a triple-vaulted hall and a small bath wing. Inside, it holds the most important surviving cycle of early Islamic painting.

    Did you know? In the painted sky of the hot room, the lines radiate correctly from the north celestial pole, but the stars run in mirror image, hinting at a copied flat model.

    More about Qusayr 'Amra →

30. 30 Sintra National Palace

    Portugal · 22.7 km from Lisbon38.798° N 9.391° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Two enormous white cones rise above the rooftops of Sintra's old town. They are the chimneys of the royal kitchens, and they mark the Palace of Sintra, also called the Town Palace, the best-preserved medieval royal residence in Portugal.

    Did you know? Each of the two conical kitchen chimneys rises about 33 metres, high enough to dominate the skyline of the entire town.

    More about Sintra National Palace →