The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Sacred Places in Asia
64 places in 18 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful UNESCO-listed sacred places in Asia are Angkor Wat (Cambodia), Prambanan Temple (Indonesia) and Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi (Kazakhstan). The list covers 64 UNESCO-listed sacred places in 18 countries. Russia has the most, with 11. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Asia is the birthplace of most of the world's major religions, and its sacred World Heritage sites show how differently each one shaped space. Hindu temples rise as carved mountains of the gods, Buddhist monasteries climb hillsides and cliffs, Islamic tombs and mosques set domes over gardens and courtyards, and Japanese temples work in timber and moss. Inscription often covers a whole sacred landscape, a valley of temples or an old capital, as much as a single building.
Angkor Wat, the twelfth-century Khmer temple-mountain, is the largest religious monument on Earth, and Prambanan on Java gathers tall ninth-century shrines to Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma. Konark in Odisha is carved as the stone chariot of the sun god, and near Xi'an the Terracotta Army guards the tomb of China's First Emperor. The Potala Palace in Lhasa, long the winter residence of the Dalai Lamas, stacks its white and red palaces up a hill at around 3,700 metres.
The Mughal tombs of India form a lineage of their own: Humayun's Tomb in Delhi was the first great garden-tomb on the subcontinent, and the Taj Mahal in Agra took the idea to its white-marble peak. In Istanbul, Hagia Sophia and the Sultan Ahmed Mosque face each other across a square, and the Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi in Turkestan shows the turquoise domes of the Timurid age. In Kyoto, Kiyomizu-dera's wooden stage stands out over a wooded slope on a framework of tall pillars.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Angkor Wat | Archaeological site | Cambodia | ✓ |
| 2 | Prambanan Temple | Archaeological site | Indonesia | ✓ |
| 3 | Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi | Mausoleum | Kazakhstan | ✓ |
| 4 | Terracotta Army | Archaeological site | People's Republic of China | ✓ |
| 5 | Hagia Sophia | Mosque | Turkey | ✓ |
| 6 | Konark Sun Temple | Temple | India | ✓ |
| 7 | Sultan Ahmed Mosque | Mosque | Turkey | ✓ |
| 8 | Potala Palace | Palace | People's Republic of China | ✓ |
| 9 | Taj Mahal | Mausoleum | India | ✓ |
| 10 | Kiyomizu-dera | Temple | Japan | ✓ |
| 11 | Humayun's Tomb | Mausoleum | India | ✓ |
| 12 | Dome of the Rock | Mosque | Palestine | ✓ |
| 13 | Temple of Heaven | Temple | People's Republic of China | ✓ |
| 14 | Mỹ Sơn Sanctuary | Archaeological site | Vietnam | ✓ |
| 15 | Borobudur Temple | Stupa | Indonesia | ✓ |
| 16 | Chora Church (Kariye) | Church building | Turkey | ✓ |
| 17 | Gur-e Amir | Mausoleum | Uzbekistan | ✓ |
| 18 | Umayyad Mosque | Mosque | Syria | ✓ |
| 19 | Tōdai-ji Temple | Temple | Japan | ✓ |
| 20 | Mount Kōya | Pilgrimage site | Japan | ✓ |
| 21 | Selimiye Mosque | Mosque | Turkey | ✓ |
| 22 | Kinkaku-ji Temple | Temple | Japan | ✓ |
| 23 | Church of the Nativity | Church building | Palestine | ✓ |
| 24 | Mahabodhi Temple | Temple | India | ✓ |
| 25 | Saint Isaac's Cathedral | Cathedral | Russia | ✓ |
| 26 | Haghpat Monastery | Monastery | Armenia | ✓ |
| 27 | Pashupatinath Temple | Temple | Nepal | ✓ |
| 28 | Brihadisvara Temple, Thanjavur | Temple | India | ✓ |
| 29 | Etchmiadzin Cathedral | Cathedral | Armenia | ✓ |
| 30 | Soltaniyeh Dome | Mausoleum | Iran | ✓ |
01 Angkor Wat
Cambodia · 5.4 km from Siem Reap13.412° N 103.867° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by The_5ifth from Pixabay Angkor Wat is the largest religious monument on Earth and the one building every Cambodian knows. It appears on the national flag. King Suryavarman II commissioned it in the first half of the 12th century as the state temple of his capital, Yaśodharapura, and dedicated it to Vishnu. It was most likely also intended as his mausoleum.
Did you know? The temple was built from an estimated five to ten million sandstone blocks, the heaviest weighing about 1.5 tonnes.
02 Prambanan Temple
Indonesia · 13.2 km from Yogyakarta City7.752° S 110.491° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Gunawan Kartapranata · CC BY-SA 3.0 Local legend explains Prambanan's scale with a story dark enough that it kept people away for centuries: Prince Bandung Bondowoso wanted to marry Princess Roro Jonggrang, who agreed only if he could build a thousand temples in a single night. With the help of spirits he very nearly managed it — so she had the villagers light fires and pound rice to fake the approach of dawn, tricking the spirits into stopping short.
Did you know? An inscription dated 856 records that the builders diverted a river, now the Opak, away from the main shrine and levelled its old bed to make room for more temples.
03 Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi
Kazakhstan · 1.4 km from Turkistan43.298° N 68.271° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Yuriy75 · CC BY-SA 3.0 The mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi in Turkistan is the building where Timurid architecture began. Timur ordered it in 1389 to replace the small twelfth-century tomb of Yasawi, a Sufi master and poet born in 1093 who spent most of his life in the town, then called Yasi, and died there in 1166.
Did you know? The great bronze cauldron in the main hall weighs about two tonnes, measures 2.2 metres across and holds roughly 3,000 litres.
04 Terracotta Army
People's Republic of China · 24.5 km from Weinan34.385° N 109.273° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by artemtation from Pixabay The farmer who found the Terracotta Army wasn't looking for it. In March 1974, Yang Zhifa, his five brothers and a neighbor were digging a well during a drought, hoping only for water, when at about three metres down they hit a layer of charcoal and reddened soil, and past four metres one of them pulled up a life-sized pottery head.
Did you know? The paint on the figures is so fragile that, once exposed to Xi'an's dry air, its lacquer base can curl within seconds and flake off in minutes.
05 Hagia Sophia
Ayasofya
Turkey · 1.1 km from Istanbul41.008° N 28.980° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by edibejko from Pixabay The building that stands today was put up in barely five years. In January 532 the Nika riots burned down the previous church on the site, and within weeks Emperor Justinian I had started a far more ambitious replacement, designed by two scholars rather than master masons: Anthemius of Tralles, a mathematician, and Isidore of Miletus, a geometer. It was dedicated in 537.
Did you know? Envoys of the Kievan Rus' prince reported that inside they could not tell whether they were in heaven or on earth, a verdict tied to Rus' conversion to Orthodoxy.
06 Konark Sun Temple
India · 21.7 km from Puri19.887° N 86.095° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Souravdas1987 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Sun Temple at Konark, on the coast of Odisha in eastern India, was built around 1250 by King Narasimhadeva I of the Eastern Ganga dynasty as a stone chariot for Surya, the sun god.
Did you know? According to legend, 1,200 craftsmen toiled for twelve years, and the master builder's 12-year-old son Dharmapada set the final crowning stone, then leapt to his death to shield them.
07 Sultan Ahmed Mosque
Turkey · 1.4 km from Istanbul41.005° N 28.977° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by OWPictures from Pixabay Sultan Ahmed I commissioned this at just 19 years old, and it was built between 1609 and 1616 — a low point in Ottoman fortunes, coming right after an unfavorable peace ended a long war with Persia. An imperial mosque of this scale was, among other things, a calculated show of confidence: proof the empire hadn't actually faltered. Ahmed died the year after it was finished, at 27.
Did you know? The tile orders swallowed the entire İznik industry, and in 1613 the sultan banned making or selling tiles for anyone else until his were finished.
08 Potala Palace
People's Republic of China · 2.2 km from Lhasa29.658° N 91.117° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by nrxfly from Pixabay 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.
09 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 Shah Jahan began building this in 1631 as a tomb for his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who had died giving birth to their fourteenth child.
Did you know? Its four minarets, each over 40 metres tall, lean slightly outward so that if one ever collapsed it would fall away from the tomb.
10 Kiyomizu-dera
Japan · 5.3 km from Kyoto34.995° N 135.785° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by JordyMeow from Pixabay Kiyomizu-dera, the "Pure Water Temple", stands on the slopes of Mount Otowa on Kyoto's eastern edge. It is one of the few temples in the city older than Kyoto itself as a capital. Tradition dates its founding to 778, when a monk from Nara followed a dream to a waterfall on the mountain; the general Sakanoue no Tamuramaro later became its patron. It is devoted to Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion.
Did you know? Kiyomizu-dera became part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of historic Kyoto in 1994.
11 Humayun's Tomb
India · 5 km from New Delhi28.593° N 77.251° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by karanpal41 from Pixabay Before the Taj Mahal there was Humayun's Tomb. Built in Delhi in the 1560s for the second Mughal emperor, it was the first great garden tomb on the Indian subcontinent and the first building there to use red sandstone on such a scale, and it set the pattern that the Mughals would refine for the next century.
Did you know? With more than 100 graves of Mughal royals and nobles in its chambers and terrace cells, the tomb is often called the Dormitory of the Mughals.
12 Dome of the Rock
Palestine · 2.7 km from Jerusalem31.778° N 35.235° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by best-biketours from Pixabay The Dome of the Rock is the oldest surviving major work of Islamic architecture, and its golden dome is the image most people carry of Jerusalem. The octagonal shrine stands at the centre of the Haram al-Sharif, or Temple Mount, in the Old City.
Did you know? Abd al-Malik's shrine reportedly cost seven times the annual tax revenue of Egypt.
13 Temple of Heaven
People's Republic of China · 2.4 km from Beijing39.882° N 116.407° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by ccxcn from Pixabay The Temple of Heaven is less a single temple than a walled ceremonial landscape in the south of central Beijing, laid out so that architecture itself would read as a statement about the cosmos. It was begun under the Yongle Emperor of the Ming dynasty, the same ruler who built the Forbidden City, with construction dated to 1406–1420.
Did you know? UNESCO notes that the temple's symbolic plan shaped architecture and city planning across East Asia for centuries.
14 Mỹ Sơn Sanctuary
Vietnam · 35.5 km from Da Nang15.763° N 108.124° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
shankar s. from Dubai, united arab emirates · CC BY 2.0 In a green valley about two kilometres across, ringed by two ranges of hills in central Vietnam, stand the ruined red-brick towers of Mỹ Sơn, the great religious centre of the kingdom of Champa. For roughly a thousand years, from the 4th to the 13th century, Cham kings built and rebuilt temples here, most of them dedicated to Shiva.
Did you know? About 32 inscribed steles have been found at Mỹ Sơn, written in Sanskrit and Cham between the 5th and 12th centuries.
15 Borobudur Temple
Indonesia · 15.5 km from Magelang7.608° S 110.204° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Justine Hong · CC BY 2.0 Borobudur was assembled from an estimated two million stone blocks without any mortar — the blocks are cut and interlocked so precisely that the structure holds together on fit alone, carrying 2,672 relief panels and 504 Buddha statues up a stepped pyramid nine centuries before anyone had a name for engineering tolerances.
Did you know? In 1885 engineers found that the base hides an older foot carved with 160 reliefs on karma, later encased behind a new stone skirt for reasons still debated.
16 Chora Church (Kariye)
Kariye Camii
Turkey · 3.3 km from Istanbul41.031° N 28.939° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Tadam · CC0 From the street in Edirnekapı the Chora looks modest: a cluster of brick domes and banded walls tucked just inside the land walls of Istanbul.
Did you know? During the final Ottoman siege of 1453, the Hodegetria icon, revered as the protector of Constantinople, was carried to the Chora to help the defenders.
17 Gur-e Amir
Uzbekistan · 3.2 km from Samarkand39.648° N 66.969° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Arina Pan · CC BY-SA 4.0 Gur-e Amir, "the Tomb of the Emir", is the mausoleum of Timur, the Turco-Mongol conqueror known in the West as Tamerlane, in his capital Samarkand. Its ribbed turquoise dome, about 15 metres across, crowns an octagonal building faced with blue, pale blue and white tiles set into terracotta brick, forming geometric patterns and bands of monumental script.
Did you know? According to legend, the tomb warned that whoever disturbed it would unleash an invader more terrible than Timur; people close to Gerasimov later called this story an invention.
18 Umayyad Mosque
Syria · 1.3 km from Damascus33.511° N 36.307° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by SLPix from Pixabay The Umayyad Mosque, the Great Mosque of Damascus, stands in the old city on a site that has been holy for about three thousand years. The Arameans built a temple here to the storm god Hadad; the Romans enlarged it into a vast sanctuary of Jupiter, whose inner enclosure walls still form the outer walls of the mosque; and at the end of the fourth century it became a cathedral.
Did you know? About 12,000 labourers built the mosque, among them Coptic, Persian, Indian, Greek and North African craftsmen.
19 Tōdai-ji Temple
Japan · 35.3 km from Ōtsu34.689° N 135.840° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by daeron from Pixabay Emperor Shōmu ordered this temple built in 743, and it wasn't primarily an act of devotion for its own sake — Japan had just been through smallpox epidemics, famine, and a failed rebellion, and Shōmu's response was to commission a nationwide network of provincial temples with this one, in the capital, as the head of the entire system.
Did you know? X-ray examination found a human tooth, pearls, mirrors, swords and jewels hidden inside the Great Buddha's knee, believed to be relics connected with Emperor Shōmu.
20 Mount Kōya
Japan · 38.3 km from Wakayama34.218° N 135.583° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Lianguanlun · CC BY 4.0 Mount Kōya is not a single peak but a high basin in the mountains of Wakayama Prefecture, a plain at about 800 metres ringed by eight summits. In the early ninth century the monk Kūkai, known after his death as Kōbō Daishi, chose this remote upland as the centre for the esoteric Shingon school he had brought back from China, and Kōyasan grew into a temple town that is still wholly given over to religion.
21 Selimiye Mosque
Turkey · 1.2 km from Edirne41.678° N 26.559° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Mozder from Pixabay The Selimiye Mosque in Edirne is the building its architect considered his masterpiece. Mimar Sinan, the chief architect of the Ottoman Empire, built it for Sultan Selim II between 1568 and 1575, and it is widely regarded as the summit of Ottoman — and much of Islamic — architecture.
Did you know? Sinan was about 80 when he built the Selimiye, which he called his masterwork after the Şehzade, his apprentice work, and the Süleymaniye, his journeyman work.
22 Kinkaku-ji Temple
Japan · 2 km from Kyoto35.039° N 135.728° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by siamkop from Pixabay The ground this pavilion stands on was a private retirement estate before it was ever a temple. In 1397 the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu bought a villa here that had belonged to a court aristocrat and rebuilt it into a lavish complex called Kitayama-dono, where he lived out his retirement from actual rule while continuing to run the country informally from the sidelines.
Did you know? Each of the three floors is built in a different style: a Heian aristocrat's residence below, a samurai house in the middle and a Zen Buddhist hall at the top.
23 Church of the Nativity
Palestine · 8.2 km from Jerusalem31.704° N 35.208° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Leen Karajeh · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is built over a grotto that Christians have venerated as the birthplace of Jesus since at least the third century, making it the oldest site in continuous Christian worship. Constantine the Great commissioned the first basilica after his mother Helena's pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the 320s; it was dedicated in 339.
Did you know? According to legend, Persian invaders spared the church in 614 because a mosaic over the entrance showed the Magi dressed as Persian priests.
24 Mahabodhi Temple
India · 11.5 km from Gaya24.696° N 84.991° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Sumitsurai · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Mahabodhi Temple marks the place where, in Buddhist tradition, Siddhartha Gautama sat beneath a fig tree and attained enlightenment, and for Buddhists it is the holiest site on earth.
Did you know? The 2013 gilding of the tower used roughly 280–290 kg of gold donated by the Thai king and Thai devotees, yet covered only its topmost section.
25 Saint Isaac's Cathedral
Russia · 0.9 km from Saint Petersburg59.934° N 30.306° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Florstein ( Telegram: WikiPhoto.Space ) · CC BY-SA 4.0 5 metres over the square that bears its name, and on a clear day it is the reference point for half of central Saint Petersburg. The building is the fourth church on the site, commissioned by Alexander I and entrusted to Auguste de Montferrand, a French-born architect trained in the studio of Charles Percier.
Did you know? The cathedral is dedicated to Saint Isaac of Dalmatia because Peter the Great was born on that saint's feast day.
26 Haghpat Monastery
Armenia · 36.4 km from Vanadzor41.094° N 44.712° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Makalu from Pixabay Haghpat sits on a green shelf partway up the side of the Debed canyon in Armenia's northern Lori region, placed so that it would be sheltered and hard to spot from the valley floor. It was founded around 976 by Queen Khosrovanuysh, wife of the Bagratid king Ashot III, at roughly the same time as its sister monastery at Sanahin a few kilometres away.
Did you know? After the 1260 siege of Mayyafariqin, Armenian and Georgian forces brought Christian relics home, and Haghpat received the hand of the Apostle Bartholomew.
27 Pashupatinath Temple
Nepal · 3.5 km from Kathmandu27.710° N 85.349° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by bijayyadav from Pixabay Pashupatinath is the most important Hindu temple in Nepal and one of the holiest Shiva shrines anywhere, the destination of pilgrims from across South Asia. It stands on the banks of the Bagmati river on the eastern side of Kathmandu, where a temple is recorded as early as 400 AD.
Did you know? The name Pashupati means lord of animals, one of the epithets of Shiva, who is worshipped here as protector of all living beings.
28 Brihadisvara Temple, Thanjavur
India · 2.4 km from Thanjavur10.783° N 79.132° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France · CC BY 2.0 Rajaraja I, the Chola emperor who dominated south India at the turn of the first millennium, built this temple to Shiva at Thanjavur between 1003 and 1010 and named it after himself: Rajarajesvaram. Locals simply call it the Big Temple, Periya Kovil, and the name is fair.
Did you know? In 1954 India's ₹1,000 banknote carried a panoramic view of the temple, and in 2010 it featured on the first ₹1,000 coin ever minted in the Republic.
29 Etchmiadzin Cathedral
Armenia · 16.6 km from Ashtarak40.162° N 44.291° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Marcin Konsek · CC BY-SA 4.0 Etchmiadzin is the mother church of the Armenian Apostolic Church and has a strong claim to being the oldest cathedral in the world. Armenian tradition places its founding between 301 and 303, just after King Tiridates III made Armenia the first state to adopt Christianity.
Did you know? The bell tower once held a bell inscribed with a Tibetan Buddhist mantra, noted by travellers throughout the nineteenth century; it vanished after its removal in the late 1930s.
30 Soltaniyeh Dome
Iran · 37.3 km from Zanjan36.434° N 48.796° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Farzad Yousefian · CC BY-SA 4.0 The mausoleum of the Mongol ruler Öljaitü at Soltaniyeh, on a high plain in north-western Iran, carries one of the largest brick domes ever built: almost 25 metres across and about 50 metres high. It was raised between 1307 and 1313 as the centrepiece of a new imperial capital.
Did you know? The mausoleum was entered on Iran's national heritage list in January 1932, more than seventy years before its UNESCO listing.
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 UNESCO-listed sacred places in Asia?
- On our list, Angkor Wat (Cambodia) ranks first, followed by Prambanan Temple (Indonesia) and Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi (Kazakhstan).
- Which country has the most UNESCO-listed sacred places in Asia?
- In our collection, the most come from Russia (11), Japan (10) and India (7).
- Why was the Taj Mahal built?
- The Mughal emperor Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal in Agra as a tomb for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died in 1631; he was later buried there beside her.
- Which building inspired the Taj Mahal?
- Humayun's Tomb in Delhi, completed in the 1570s, was the first great Mughal garden-tomb, and its plan of a domed mausoleum in a four-part garden is seen as the model the Taj Mahal later refined.
- Who lived in the Potala Palace?
- The Potala Palace in Lhasa was the winter residence of the Dalai Lamas from the seventeenth century until 1959, and it also served as the seat of the Tibetan government.
- How many UNESCO-listed sacred places are on this list in Asia?
- The list covers 64 UNESCO-listed sacred places in 18 countries. Russia has the most, with 11.