The Most Remarkable Monuments Seen on Screen in the World
7 places in 4 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most remarkable monuments seen on screen in the world are Mount Rushmore (United States), Statue of Liberty (United States) and Taj Mahal (India). The list covers 7 monuments seen on screen in 4 countries. The United States has the most, with 3. Last updated 13 October 2026.
A monument becomes a film star because audiences already know it. One shot of a carved face or a raised torch tells viewers exactly where they are and what is at stake, which is why directors stage climaxes at national monuments and sometimes destroy them. The monuments here were built to embody a nation, a love or a city, and the screen has repeated that meaning until it became shorthand.
Mount Rushmore, carved into the granite of South Dakota's Black Hills between 1927 and 1941, gave Hitchcock the setting for the climactic chase of North by Northwest. The Statue of Liberty, Bartholdi's copper figure on an iron frame engineered by Gustave Eiffel, delivered the closing shock of Planet of the Apes, and Washington's Lincoln Memorial, a Doric temple around the seated president, has been the backdrop for political dramas since Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
Elsewhere the screen favours romance and spectacle. Rome's Trevi Fountain became an emblem of the city after Anita Ekberg waded into it in La Dolce Vita. The Taj Mahal, the white marble tomb Shah Jahan raised for Mumtaz Mahal, appears whenever a film needs India's most recognisable silhouette, and Seville's Royal Alcázar, with its Mudéjar courts and gardens, played the Water Gardens of Dorne in Game of Thrones. León Cathedral rounds out the picture with its walls of medieval stained glass.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mount Rushmore | Monument | United States | |
| 2 | Statue of Liberty | Monument | United States | ✓ |
| 3 | Taj Mahal | Mausoleum | India | ✓ |
| 4 | Trevi Fountain | Sculpture | Italy | |
| 5 | León Cathedral | Cathedral | Spain | ✓ |
| 6 | Lincoln Memorial | Monument | United States | |
| 7 | Royal Alcázar of Seville | Palace | Spain | ✓ |
01 Mount Rushmore
United States · 29 km from Rapid City43.879° N 103.459° W
Dean Franklin · Public domain The four faces on Mount Rushmore were not the original plan. Gutzon Borglum's first brief called for figures tied to the American West — Lewis and Clark, their guide Sacagawea, and Lakota leaders Red Cloud and Crazy Horse were all part of early discussions — before Borglum redirected the project toward four presidents on the theory that it would draw broader national interest.
Did you know? Behind Lincoln's head lies an unfinished Hall of Records, where a vault holding 16 enamel panels on American history was sealed in 1998.
02 Statue of Liberty
United States · 5.5 km from New York City40.689° N 74.044° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by itou365 from Pixabay The name most people reach for is Bartholdi, and that's correct as far as it goes — Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi conceived the whole figure, from her raised torch to the broken chains at her feet, and sculpted the copper skin that visitors actually see, a figure standing some 46 metres from base to torch. What's murkier, and worth untangling, is who built what's actually holding her up.
Did you know? Her copper skin is only about 2.4 millimetres thick across the entire figure.
03 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.
04 Trevi Fountain
Fontana di Trevi
Italy · 0.4 km from Rome41.901° N 12.483° E
Image by jdegheest from Pixabay What feeds this fountain isn't ornamental plumbing — it's the working outflow of the Aqua Virgo, an aqueduct finished in 19 BC that has been delivering the same spring water to roughly this same spot for over two thousand years. The Roman legend behind the name says a young woman, a virgo, once led thirsty soldiers to the spring; whether or not that's true, the aqueduct itself is real and still functioning.
Did you know? About 26 metres high and 49 metres wide, the Trevi is often called the largest Baroque fountain in the world.
05 León Cathedral
Catedral de Santa María de Regla de León
Spain · 2.2 km from León42.599° N 5.567° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by TerapiasNaturales from Pixabay León's cathedral, Santa María de Regla, is the Spanish cathedral that went furthest in the Gothic dream of replacing walls with light. It has around 125 windows and about 1,800 square metres of stained glass, most of it made between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, one of the largest collections of medieval glass anywhere.
Did you know? For centuries a dried hide over a door was said to be a mole that wrecked the builders' work by night; in the 1990s it proved a leatherback turtle shell.
06 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.
Did you know? The spot where Martin Luther King Jr. stood in 1963, on a landing eighteen steps below the statue, was engraved in 2003.
07 Royal Alcázar of Seville
Spain · 2.5 km from Seville37.384° N 5.991° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Danor from Pixabay The Royal Alcázar of Seville is a palace built as a sequence of courtyards, each opening into the next: arcades carved with lace-like plaster, tiled walls, pools and channels of water, and beyond them a maze of gardens full of orange trees and palms.
Did you know? Arabic inscriptions in Pedro I's palace refer to the Christian king as 'Sultan Don Bidru'.
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 monuments seen on screen in the world?
- On our list, Mount Rushmore (United States) ranks first, followed by Statue of Liberty (United States) and Taj Mahal (India).
- Which country has the most monuments seen on screen in the world?
- In our collection, the most come from the United States (3), Spain (2) and India (1).
- Was North by Northwest filmed on Mount Rushmore?
- Only in part. Hitchcock filmed views of the monument on location, but the chase across the presidents' faces was shot on a studio replica, since filming on the carving itself was not allowed.
- Why do people throw coins into the Trevi Fountain?
- Tradition holds that a coin tossed over the shoulder into the fountain ensures a return to Rome. The coins are collected and given to charity.
- Who designed the Statue of Liberty?
- The sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi designed the figure, and Gustave Eiffel engineered its internal iron framework. It was a gift from France, dedicated in 1886.
- How many monuments seen on screen are on this list in the world?
- The list covers 7 monuments seen on screen in 4 countries. The United States has the most, with 3.