The Most Remarkable Burial Mounds in the World
7 places in 7 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most remarkable burial mounds in the world are Newgrange (Ireland), Maeshowe (United Kingdom) and Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak (Bulgaria). The list covers 7 burial mounds in 7 countries. Bulgaria has the most, with 1. Last updated 13 October 2026.
A burial mound is architecture made almost invisible: a chamber of stone or timber hidden under a hill of earth, so that from outside it reads as part of the land. The great ones reveal themselves inside, in a narrow passage that leads to a vaulted chamber, in walls covered with carved spirals or painted figures, or in an opening placed so that the sun enters only on one day of the year. Others impress by sheer size, rising like natural hills shaped with surveyor's precision.
This collection gathers mounds from the Atlantic to East Asia. The Cairn of Gavrinis, on an island in the Gulf of Morbihan, lines its passage with stones carved in dense spirals and arcs. At Newgrange in Ireland, built around 3200 BC, a roof-box over the entrance lets the rising sun reach the inner chamber at the winter solstice, and Maeshowe in Orkney catches the setting midwinter sun. In Japan, the keyhole-shaped Daisen Kofun near Osaka is among the largest tombs in the world, while the grassy royal mounds of Daereungwon in Gyeongju belong to the kingdom of Silla. At Aigai in northern Greece lie the royal tombs of Macedon, and the Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak in Bulgaria keeps its painted dome.
Every mound here was chosen for how it looks and is ranked by beauty. Each has its own text, a photograph credited to its author and a place on the map, and the section also opens by country on separate pages.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Newgrange | Tumulus | Ireland | ✓ |
| 2 | Maeshowe | Tumulus | United Kingdom | ✓ |
| 3 | Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak | Tumulus | Bulgaria | ✓ |
| 4 | Cairn of Gavrinis | Tumulus | France | |
| 5 | Daisen Kofun | Tumulus | Japan | |
| 6 | Aigai | Tumulus | Greece | |
| 7 | Daereungwon | Tumulus | South Korea |
01 Newgrange
Ireland · 8.4 km from Drogheda53.695° N 6.476° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by fsHH from Pixabay Newgrange is a Neolithic passage tomb on a rise above the River Boyne in County Meath, built around 3100 BC, several centuries before the Great Pyramid and the stone circle at Stonehenge. It is the best-known monument of Brú na Bóinne, the World Heritage landscape in a bend of the river that also includes the great tombs of Knowth and Dowth. The mound is about 85 metres across and 12 metres high, ringed by large kerbstones, many carved with spirals, lozenges and chevrons, and by the remains of a later circle of standing stones.
Did you know? DNA from a skull in the most elaborate chamber showed that the man's parents were first-degree relatives, probably brother and sister.
02 Maeshowe
Maes Howe
United Kingdom · 14.1 km from Kirkwall58.997° N 3.188° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Gordon Hatton · CC BY-SA 2.0 From outside, Maes Howe is only a smooth green mound rising from the fields of Orkney's West Mainland, about 35 metres across and a little over seven metres high, with a ditch around its platform. Inside is one of the most accomplished buildings of Neolithic Europe. Raised around 2800 BC, roughly five thousand years ago, it is a chambered cairn: a low passage about 11 metres long leads into a tall square chamber built of Orkney flagstone, with smaller side cells opening off it. Some of the slabs weigh up to 30 tonnes, and the courses of stone are laid and fitted so precisely that the corbelled walls still stand. Estimates of the labour involved run to tens of thousands of hours, the work of a whole community.
Did you know? Among the Norse graffiti are three carved figures, including a finely cut beast known as the Maeshowe Dragon, now a familiar emblem of Orkney.
03 Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak
Bulgaria · 29 km from Stara Zagora42.626° N 25.399° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Roweromaniak · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak is a small brick beehive tomb of the fourth century BC, and its painted dome is among the finest pieces of Hellenistic-era painting to survive anywhere in the Balkans. It lies on the edge of the town of Kazanlak, in the valley between the Balkan Mountains and Sredna Gora that archaeologists call the Valley of the Thracian Rulers: more than a thousand burial mounds of the Thracian royalty and aristocracy are scattered across it, near the ruins of their capital Seuthopolis.
Did you know? The tomb was found by accident on 19 April 1944, when Bulgarian soldiers digging an air-raid shelter into the mound struck a brick wall.
04 Cairn of Gavrinis
Cairn de Gavrinis
France47.572° N 2.899° W
Myrabella · CC BY-SA 3.0 Gavrinis is a small granite island in the Gulf of Morbihan, uninhabited and only about 750 by 400 metres, and the round stone mound on its crest hides one of the most richly carved chambers of the Neolithic in Europe. The cairn, about 50 metres across, was raised around 4200 to 4000 BC, and it was used as a passage grave until about 3000 BC, when its builders sealed the entrance and left it to the heather.
Did you know? Carvings from the capstone's earlier life as a standing stone survive on its hidden faces, including a horned bovid over 2 metres long and an axe-plough about 3 metres long.
05 Daisen Kofun
Japan · 14.2 km from Osaka34.564° N 135.487° E
Asset utilitist · CC0 Daisen Kofun in Sakai, on the southern edge of Osaka, is the largest keyhole-shaped burial mound in Japan and one of the largest tombs ever built anywhere, often set beside the Great Pyramid of Khufu and the tomb of China's First Emperor. It is attributed to Emperor Nintoku and is thought to have taken about twenty years to raise in the middle of the 5th century, in the age when Japan's rulers expressed their power through ever larger earthworks. The mound itself is about 486 metres long, rising some 35 metres above the surrounding city, and with its moats and outer banks the whole monument covers roughly 46 hectares.
Did you know? A 2018 three-dimensional survey revised the mound's length from 486 to about 525 metres, because its base continues for metres below the moat water.
06 Aigai
Αιγές
Greece · 27.5 km from Katerini40.478° N 22.323° E
Македонец · CC BY-SA 4.0 Beneath a grassy mound about 100 metres across, near the village of Vergina in northern Greece, lie the tombs of the Macedonian royal house. In 1977 the archaeologist Manolis Andronikos dug into this Great Tumulus and found four tombs, two of them untouched since antiquity. One held a solid gold casket stamped with a radiant star, now known as the Vergina Sun, together with a gold wreath and the cremated bones of a man whose injuries match those recorded for Philip II, father of Alexander the Great.
Did you know? The golden larnax that held the king's bones is made of 24-carat gold and weighs about 11 kilograms.
07 Daereungwon
South Korea · 0.5 km from Gyeongju35.838° N 129.212° E
손묵광 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Daereungwon, in the middle of Gyeongju, is a park of great grassy domes: 23 burial mounds of kings, queens and nobles of Silla, the kingdom that ruled this corner of Korea for centuries from its capital here. The mounds rise like soft green hills among pines and paths, and their smooth curves against the sky are the image of the city. The largest, Hwangnamdaechong, is a double mound, two tombs joined end to end; another is attributed to King Michu.
Did you know? Hwangnamdaechong is the largest Silla tomb ever found: its joined mounds stretch about 120 metres north to south and rise over 20 metres high.
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 is the most remarkable burial mound in the world?
- On our list, Newgrange (Ireland) ranks first, followed by Maeshowe (United Kingdom) and Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak (Bulgaria).
- What is a tumulus?
- A tumulus is a mound of earth and stones raised over one or more graves. Many contain a stone chamber reached by a passage, which is why they are also called passage tombs or barrows.
- What happens at Newgrange on the winter solstice?
- Around the winter solstice, the rising sun shines through a roof-box above the entrance and along the passage, lighting the floor of the inner chamber for several minutes.
- Which country has the most remarkable burial mounds?
- In our collection, the most come from Bulgaria (1), France (1) and Greece (1).
- How many burial mounds are on this list in the world?
- The list covers 7 burial mounds in 7 countries. Bulgaria has the most, with 1.