The Most Remarkable Modern Monuments in the World
5 places in 4 countries · updated 6 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most remarkable modern monuments in the world are Fernsehturm Berlin (Germany), Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Germany) and Christ the Redeemer (Brazil). The list covers 5 modern monuments in 4 countries. Germany has the most, with 2. Last updated 6 October 2026.
Modern monuments speak in new materials and new ideas about memory. Reinforced concrete, stainless steel and engineered towers allowed sculptors and architects to work at a scale earlier centuries reserved for temples, while the wars and ideologies of the twentieth century demanded memorials that could hold grief, faith or political conviction. Some still use classical language; others abandon the figure altogether.
Christ the Redeemer, completed in 1931, stands with open arms on the summit of Corcovado above Rio de Janeiro, built of reinforced concrete faced with soapstone tiles. The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, dedicated in 1922, frames Daniel Chester French's seated Lincoln inside a Greek Doric temple designed by Henry Bacon. Vera Mukhina's Worker and Kolkhoz Woman, made of stainless steel for the 1937 Paris International Exposition, strides forward holding a hammer and sickle aloft, now in Moscow.
Berlin offers two contrasting modern landmarks. The Fernsehturm, completed in 1969, became a symbol of the city with its observation sphere high above Alexanderplatz. Peter Eisenman's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, opened in 2005, fills a whole city block near the Brandenburg Gate with a field of concrete stelae on undulating ground, leaving each visitor to find their own way through.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fernsehturm Berlin | Observation tower | Germany | |
| 2 | Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe | War memorial | Germany | |
| 3 | Christ the Redeemer | Sculpture | Brazil | |
| 4 | Worker and Kolkhoz Woman | Sculpture | Russia | |
| 5 | Lincoln Memorial | Monument | United States |
01 Fernsehturm Berlin
Berliner Fernsehturm
Germany · 0.7 km from Berlin52.521° N 13.409° E
Image by BernardoUPloud from Pixabay The Fernsehturm rises 368 metres from the centre of Berlin, the tallest structure in Germany and visible from almost every district of the city. It was built between 1965 and 1969 by the East German government as both a broadcasting tower and a statement of socialist modernity, and its silhouette deliberately borrowed from the space age: the steel-clad sphere near the top was meant to recall Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. Many architects worked on it, among them Hermann Henselmann, Jörg Streitparth, Fritz Dieter and Günter Franke.
Did you know? The East German budget for the tower was about 33 million marks, but the final bill came to more than 132 million, four times the plan.
02 Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas
Germany · 1.8 km from Berlin52.514° N 13.379° E
Dietmar Rabich · CC BY-SA 4.0 Two blocks from the Brandenburg Gate, on ground where the Berlin Wall's death strip once ran, a field of 2,711 grey concrete blocks tilts gently across 1.9 hectares. Seen from the pavement it looks almost calm: low slabs at the edges, a grid of rows, nothing that announces itself. The memorial to the Jews murdered in Europe works only when you walk into it. The ground sinks beneath you, the stelae rise to more than four and a half metres, the city noise thins out, and within a few steps you are alone in a narrow grey corridor with no sense of where the others have gone.
Did you know? The memorial's 2,711 stelae are arranged in 54 rows running north to south and 87 rows running east to west.
03 Christ the Redeemer
Cristo Redentor
Brazil · 4.9 km from Rio de Janeiro22.952° S 43.210° W
Image by FlaviaPadula from Pixabay The statue is as much a French project as a Brazilian one. Engineer Heitor da Silva Costa won the 1922 competition to design it, then spent years in Europe developing the plans, where he brought on French sculptor Paul Landowski — who ended up designing the head and hands — while the face itself was modeled by a Romanian-born sculptor, Gheorghe Leonida. Three nationalities, working across two continents, to build Rio's most recognizable landmark.
Did you know? The statue is 30 metres tall on an 8-metre pedestal, its outstretched arms span 28 metres, and it weighs about 635 tonnes.
04 Worker and Kolkhoz Woman
Russia · 8.5 km from Moscow55.828° N 37.647° E
Image by EvgeniT from Pixabay A man and a woman in stainless steel stride forward, raising a hammer and a sickle so that together they form the Soviet emblem: Worker and Kolkhoz Woman is the defining image of Soviet socialist realism, rendered with an Art Deco sense of movement. The idea and composition came from the architect Boris Iofan, who designed the Soviet pavilion for the 1937 World's Fair in Paris and wanted it crowned by a sculptural group; Vera Mukhina gave the figures their form. In Paris the Soviet and German pavilions were placed face to face across the main boulevard by the Trocadéro, and the pair, striding from west to east along the pavilion's axis, carried a message no visitor missed. Mukhina drew on classical and French models, including the Tyrannicides, the Winged Victory of Samothrace and Rude's Marseillaise on the Arc de Triomphe.
Did you know? The figures stand 24.5 metres tall, yet their steel skin weighs only about 12 tonnes, hung on an internal frame of some 63 tonnes.
05 Lincoln Memorial
United States · 3.6 km from Washington38.889° N 77.050° W
Image by MarkThomas from Pixabay The Lincoln Memorial closes the western end of the National Mall like the temple at the end of a sacred way. The architect Henry Bacon gave it the form of a Greek Doric temple in white Yule marble from Colorado, ringed by 36 fluted columns, one for each state of the Union at the time of Lincoln's death, with the names of the 48 states of 1922 carved above. Critics at the time thought a temple too grand for so plain a man; the building was dedicated on 30 May 1922, and in 2007 American architects ranked it seventh among the country's favourite buildings.
Did you know? The statue was first planned at 10 feet but enlarged to 19 so it would not be dwarfed by the hall; standing, Lincoln would be about 28 feet tall.
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 modern monuments in the world?
- On our list, Fernsehturm Berlin (Germany) ranks first, followed by Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Germany) and Christ the Redeemer (Brazil).
- Which country has the most modern monuments in the world?
- In our collection, the most come from Germany (2), Brazil (1) and Russia (1).
- How many stelae are in the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe?
- The memorial, designed by Peter Eisenman, consists of 2,711 concrete stelae of varying heights arranged in a grid on sloping ground. It was inaugurated in 2005.
- What is Christ the Redeemer made of?
- The statue is made of reinforced concrete covered with a mosaic of soapstone tiles. It was designed by Heitor da Silva Costa with the French sculptor Paul Landowski and completed in 1931.
- Who sculpted the statue in the Lincoln Memorial?
- The seated statue of Abraham Lincoln was designed by Daniel Chester French and carved by the Piccirilli Brothers from Georgia white marble. The memorial building itself was designed by Henry Bacon.
- How many modern monuments are on this list in the world?
- The list covers 5 modern monuments in 4 countries. Germany has the most, with 2.