The Most Remarkable Ancient Monuments in the World
7 places in 5 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most remarkable ancient monuments in the world are Castel Sant'Angelo (Italy), Trajan's Column (Italy) and Tower of Hercules (Spain). The list covers 7 ancient monuments in 5 countries. Italy has the most, with 3. Last updated 14 October 2026.
An ancient monument was built to outlast its makers, and the ones that did reveal what early societies cared about most: the gods, the dead and the reach of an empire. Many survived because they were too massive to move or too useful to abandon; others because they were buried and forgotten. Together they span the longest stretch of human building, from hunter-gatherer sanctuaries to the public works of imperial Rome.
The oldest here is Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Anatolia, where massive T-shaped pillars carved with foxes, boars and vultures were raised by hunter-gatherers around 11,000 years ago, millennia before Stonehenge. The Great Sphinx at Giza was shaped from the bedrock of the plateau beside the pyramids, and near Xi'an the Terracotta Army of China's first emperor stands in ranks of individually modelled soldiers, found by farmers digging a well in 1974.
Rome supplies the rest. Trajan's Column records the conquest of Dacia in a relief that spirals up its shaft, and Hadrian's mausoleum survives as Castel Sant'Angelo, turned into a papal fortress and linked to the Vatican by a fortified passage. On the Atlantic coast at A Coruña, the Tower of Hercules is a Roman lighthouse that still guides ships, the oldest lighthouse known to remain in use.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Castel Sant'Angelo | Castle | Italy | |
| 2 | Trajan's Column | Sculpture | Italy | |
| 3 | Tower of Hercules | Fortified tower | Spain | ✓ |
| 4 | Terracotta Army | Archaeological site | People's Republic of China | ✓ |
| 5 | Column of Marcus Aurelius | Sculpture | Italy | |
| 6 | Göbekli Tepe | Archaeological site | Turkey | ✓ |
| 7 | The Great Sphinx | Sculpture | Egypt |
01 Castel Sant'Angelo
Italy · 1.4 km from Rome41.903° N 12.466° E
Image by rainhard2 from Pixabay Hadrian started building his own tomb in 123 CE and didn't live to see it finished — it was completed in 139 under his successor Antoninus Pius, a cylindrical drum of a monument meant to hold the ashes of an emperor and his family for eternity. Eternity lasted about three centuries as a mausoleum.
Did you know? The current bronze angel by Peter Anton von Verschaffelt replaced a 1536 marble Saint Michael by Raffaello da Montelupo in 1753.
02 Trajan's Column
Colonna Traiana
Italy · 0.3 km from Rome41.896° N 12.484° E
Raffaele pagani · CC BY-SA 4.0 Trajan's Column is a 30-metre marble shaft, 35 m with its pedestal, that has stood in Trajan's Forum just north of the Roman Forum since it was dedicated on 12 May 113. It celebrates Emperor Trajan's two wars against the Dacians in 101-102 and 105-106, and it was most likely designed under the architect Apollodorus of Damascus.
Did you know? The lettering of the dedication on the base became the classic model of Roman square capitals, and Carol Twombly based her 1989 Trajan typeface on it.
03 Tower of Hercules
Torre de Hércules
Spain · 6.3 km from A Coruña43.386° N 8.406° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez (Lmbuga) · CC BY-SA 3.0 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? Of the tower's roughly 55 metres, about 34 are surviving Roman masonry; the top 21 metres were added during the 18th-century restoration.
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? Legs were built much like terracotta drainage pipes, and heads, arms and torsos were made separately before assembly.
05 Column of Marcus Aurelius
Colonna di Marco Aurelio
Italy · 0.3 km from Rome41.901° N 12.480° E
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Column of Marcus Aurelius stands in Piazza Colonna, on the Via del Corso in the centre of Rome, in front of Palazzo Chigi, the seat of the Italian government. It was raised to honour the emperor Marcus Aurelius and his campaigns against the Germanic and Sarmatian peoples north of the Danube, fought from 169 until his death in 180, and was completed around 193.
06 Göbekli Tepe
Göbeklitepe
Turkey · 12.8 km from Şanlıurfa37.223° N 38.922° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Spica-Vega Photo Arts (Banu Nazikcan) · CC BY-SA 4.0 Göbekli Tepe changes the order in which the story of civilisation is usually told. On a limestone ridge north-east of Şanlıurfa, a mound about 15 metres high and 8 hectares across holds monumental enclosures built between roughly 9500 and 8000 BC — by people who had not yet adopted pottery and were only on the threshold of farming.
Did you know? In Turkish the name means Potbelly Hill, while one Kurdish name for the mound translates as Wish Hill.
07 The Great Sphinx
Egypt · 6.4 km from Giza29.975° N 31.138° E
Image by Makalu from Pixabay The Great Sphinx of Giza is a lion with a human head, carved directly out of the limestone bedrock of the Giza Plateau and facing east toward the Nile Valley. It is 73 metres long from paws to tail and 20 metres high, and is the oldest known monumental sculpture in Egypt.
Did you know? In the 1st century AD the Sphinx was dug out again in honour of Emperor Nero, and a stairway over 12 metres wide was built down to its paws.
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 remarkable ancient monuments in the world?
- On our list, Castel Sant'Angelo (Italy) ranks first, followed by Trajan's Column (Italy) and Tower of Hercules (Spain).
- Which country has the most ancient monuments in the world?
- In our collection, the most come from Italy (3), Egypt (1) and the People's Republic of China (1).
- How old is Göbekli Tepe?
- Its earliest monumental enclosures date to around 9500 BC, making the site roughly 11,500 years old, several thousand years older than Stonehenge or the Egyptian pyramids.
- How was the Terracotta Army discovered?
- In 1974 farmers digging a well near Xi'an struck fragments of clay figures, which led to the excavation of pits holding thousands of life-size soldiers buried with the first Qin emperor.
- What was Castel Sant'Angelo originally?
- It was built as the mausoleum of Emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century AD and later converted into a fortress and refuge used by the popes.
- How many ancient monuments are on this list in the world?
- The list covers 7 ancient monuments in 5 countries. Italy has the most, with 3.