The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Temples in Asia

26 places in 8 countries · updated 13 October 2026

1. 01 Angkor Wat

   Cambodia · 5.4 km from Siem Reap13.412° N 103.867° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   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.

   More about Angkor Wat →

2. 02 Prambanan Temple

   Indonesia · 13.2 km from Yogyakarta City7.752° S 110.491° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   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.

   More about Prambanan Temple →

3. 03 Konark Sun Temple

   India · 21.7 km from Puri19.887° N 86.095° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   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.

   More about Konark Sun Temple →

4. 04 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 →

5. 05 Kiyomizu-dera

   Japan · 5.3 km from Kyoto34.995° N 135.785° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   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.

   More about Kiyomizu-dera →

6. 06 Temple of Heaven

   People's Republic of China · 2.4 km from Beijing39.882° N 116.407° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   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.

   More about Temple of Heaven →

7. 07 Mỹ Sơn Sanctuary

   Vietnam · 35.5 km from Da Nang15.763° N 108.124° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   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.

   More about Mỹ Sơn Sanctuary →

8. 08 Borobudur Temple

   Indonesia · 15.5 km from Magelang7.608° S 110.204° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   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.

   More about Borobudur Temple →

9. 09 Tōdai-ji Temple

   Japan · 35.3 km from Ōtsu34.689° N 135.840° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   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.

   More about Tōdai-ji Temple →

10. 10 Kinkaku-ji Temple

    Japan · 2 km from Kyoto35.039° N 135.728° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    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.

    More about Kinkaku-ji Temple →

11. 11 Mahabodhi Temple

    India · 11.5 km from Gaya24.696° N 84.991° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    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.

    More about Mahabodhi Temple →

12. 12 Pashupatinath Temple

    Nepal · 3.5 km from Kathmandu27.710° N 85.349° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    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.

    More about Pashupatinath Temple →

13. 13 Brihadisvara Temple, Thanjavur

    India · 2.4 km from Thanjavur10.783° N 79.132° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    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.

    More about Brihadisvara Temple, Thanjavur →

14. 14 Jokhang

    People's Republic of China · 3.2 km from Lhasa29.653° N 91.132° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Jokhang is the most sacred temple in Tibet, the place every Tibetan Buddhist hopes to reach at least once, and the old heart of Lhasa grew up around it. It was founded in the 7th century under King Songtsen Gampo, the first ruler of a unified Tibet, to house a Buddha image brought by his Nepalese queen Bhrikuti; its design is attributed to Nepalese craftsmen.

    Did you know? In front of the temple stands a pillar inscribed with the Sino-Tibetan treaty of 821–822, which fixed the border between the two empires.

    More about Jokhang →

15. 15 Preah Vihear Temple

    Cambodia14.391° N 104.680° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Preah Vihear is a temple built on the edge of the world as the Khmer knew it. It stands on a promontory of the Dângrêk Mountains where the escarpment breaks off in a sheer cliff some 525 metres above the Cambodian plain, and from the last terrace the land below stretches away to the horizon — a view that makes the setting as much a part of the monument as its stones.

    Did you know? A stele inscribed around 1120 records that the royal guru Divakarapandita gave the temple a golden dancing Shiva and lined its floor with bronze plates.

    More about Preah Vihear Temple →

16. 16 Dambulla cave temple

    Sri Lanka7.857° N 80.649° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Dambulla cave temple occupies a great granite outcrop that rises about 160 metres above the plains of central Sri Lanka, and beneath one immense overhang it holds five shrines packed with statues and painted from floor to ceiling. It is the largest and best-preserved cave temple complex in the country and still an active monastery. UNESCO listed it in 1991, and it is also known as the Golden Temple of Dambulla.

    Did you know? The complex holds 153 Buddha statues alongside three statues of Sri Lankan kings and four of Hindu deities.

    More about Dambulla cave temple →

17. 17 Ginkaku-ji Temple

    Japan · 4.6 km from Kyoto35.027° N 135.798° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Ginkaku-ji, the "Temple of the Silver Pavilion", is officially called Jishō-ji and belongs to the Shōkoku-ji branch of Rinzai Zen. It stands at the foot of the Higashiyama hills on Kyoto's eastern edge. It began as the retirement villa of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa, who started planning it around 1460.

    Did you know? Ginkaku-ji is one of the seventeen sites of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994.

    More about Ginkaku-ji Temple →

18. 18 Swayambhunath

    Nepal · 2.5 km from Kathmandu27.715° N 85.290° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Swayambhunath crowns a wooded hill just west of Kathmandu, and from almost anywhere in the valley you can see its white dome and gilded spire, painted on all four sides with the half-closed eyes of the Buddha. For the Newar Buddhists of the valley it is one of their three holiest sites, for Tibetan Buddhists second only to Boudhanath, and Hindus worship here too.

    Did you know? According to local legend, the temple's monkeys descended from lice in the long hair of the bodhisattva Manjushri.

    More about Swayambhunath →

19. 19 Hōryū-ji

    Japan · 22.8 km from Osaka34.614° N 135.734° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The wooden halls of Hōryū-ji have been standing for some thirteen centuries. Its Golden Hall (Kondō) and five-storey pagoda are among the oldest surviving wooden buildings anywhere in the world, and in 1993 the temple, together with nearby Hokki-ji, became Japan's first UNESCO World Heritage Site as the Buddhist Monuments in the Hōryū-ji Area.

    Did you know? Inside the pagoda, the central pillar reaches three metres below the great foundation stone, where a relic believed to be a fragment of the Buddha's bones is enshrined.

    More about Hōryū-ji →

20. 20 Byōdō-in Temple

    Japan · 14.1 km from Ōtsu34.889° N 135.808° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Byōdō-in is the temple on the Japanese ten-yen coin, and the building on that coin, the Phoenix Hall, has stood beside its pond in Uji since 1053.

    Did you know? The temple bell is counted among Japan's three most famous bells, celebrated specifically for the beauty of its shape and relief decoration.

    More about Byōdō-in Temple →

21. 21 Khajuraho Group of Monuments

    India24.850° N 79.933° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The temples of Khajuraho are the surviving core of a religious city built by the Chandela dynasty in what is now Madhya Pradesh, in the heart of India. Most were raised between about 885 and 1000 CE, and inscriptions suggest the greater part of what stands today was complete by around 1030. By the 12th century there were some 85 temples spread over 20 square kilometres; about 25 survive across 6.

    Did you know? The temples were built without mortar: sandstone blocks lock together with mortise-and-tenon joints and stay in place by gravity, some beams weighing up to 20 tons.

    More about Khajuraho Group of Monuments →

22. 22 Banteay Srei

    Cambodia · 28.4 km from Siem Reap13.599° N 103.963° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Banteay Srei is a small temple with an outsized reputation. Set in the countryside about 25 kilometres northeast of the main Angkor group, it was consecrated in 967, and unlike almost every other major monument of Angkor it was not built by a king but by two courtiers in the service of Rajendravarman II, Yajnavaraha and Vishnukumara.

    Did you know? Its exact consecration date, 22 April 967, is known from a foundation stela found only in 1936; scholars had assumed the rich carving meant a later date.

    More about Banteay Srei →

23. 23 Ramappa Temple

    India18.259° N 79.942° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Ramappa is a temple named after the man who built it, not the god it honours, and the sculptor has earned the tribute. Raised in 1213 in the village of Palampet in Telangana by Recherla Rudra, a general of the Kakatiya king Ganapati Deva, the temple is dedicated to Shiva as Rudreshwara, but it is known everywhere by the name of its designer. It is often said to be the only temple in India named after its craftsman.

    Did you know? The light bricks of the tower weigh only about three-quarters as much as ordinary bricks, thanks to husk and fibre burned out in firing.

    More about Ramappa Temple →

24. 24 Bingling Temple

    People's Republic of China · 26.8 km from Linxia City35.806° N 103.044° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    In a side canyon of the Yellow River, where sheer cliffs rise above the water, hundreds of Buddhas look out from niches and caves cut into the cliff. The Bingling Temple grottoes stretch for about 200 metres along the north side of the gorge and end in a great natural recess, where wooden stairways climb the rock face to higher caves and to a colossal figure of the Maitreya Buddha more than 27 metres tall.

    Did you know? The ink inscription of 420 CE in Cave 169 is the earliest precisely dated inscription known from any cave temple in China.

    More about Bingling Temple →

25. 25 Shrines and Temples of Nikkō

    Japan · 31.9 km from Utsunomiya36.748° N 139.611° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Nikkō is less a single temple than a sacred mountain landscape: a hillside of tall cedars above the town where Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples have grown into one another for more than a thousand years.

    Did you know? About 13,000 cedars line 35 kilometres of the old roads to Nikkō, which Guinness listed in 1996 as the longest tree-lined avenue in the world.

    More about Shrines and Temples of Nikkō →

26. 26 Saihō-ji (Moss Temple)

    Japan · 7.3 km from Kyoto34.992° N 135.684° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Saihō-ji, better known as Koke-dera, the Moss Temple, lies at the foot of the western hills of Kyoto, and its garden is one of the most celebrated in Japan. Under the trees, the ground is carpeted in moss — more than 120 kinds of it, in shades from lime to deep bottle-green — spreading over banks, roots, stones and islands so evenly that the whole wood seems upholstered.

    Did you know? The temple's name was once written with characters meaning Western Paradise, Amida's Pure Land; Musō kept the sound but changed the characters to evoke sayings about Bodhidharma.

    More about Saihō-ji (Moss Temple) →