The Most Remarkable Monuments in Italy
5 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most remarkable monuments in Italy are Castel Sant'Angelo, Trajan's Column and Column of Marcus Aurelius. The list covers 5 monuments. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Rome is a city where monuments are reused rather than retired. An emperor's tomb becomes a papal fortress, a victory column receives a saint, an aqueduct ends in a Baroque stage set, and a unified kingdom builds its own altar in white marble beside the ancient forums.
Castel Sant'Angelo began as the mausoleum of Hadrian and turned into a papal citadel linked to the Vatican by a fortified corridor, the Passetto di Borgo. Trajan's Column, dedicated in AD 113, wraps a spiral frieze of the Dacian Wars around its shaft, and a bronze Saint Peter has stood on top since the 16th century. The Vittoriano, the vast monument to Victor Emmanuel II, holds the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier beneath its colonnade of bright white Botticino marble. The Trevi Fountain, completed in 1762 to Nicola Salvi's design, marks the end of the ancient Aqua Virgo aqueduct with Oceanus riding a shell chariot out of a palace façade.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Castel Sant'Angelo | Castle | |
| 2 | Trajan's Column | Sculpture | |
| 3 | Column of Marcus Aurelius | Sculpture | |
| 4 | Vittoriano (Victor Emmanuel II Monument), Rome | Monument | |
| 5 | Trevi Fountain | Sculpture |
01 Castel Sant'Angelo
Italy · 1.4 km from Rome41.903° N 12.466° E
Image by rainhard2 from Pixabay The detail that turns it from a fortress into a thriller set is the Passetto di Borgo: an elevated, roughly 800-metre corridor built into the old city wall, connecting the castle directly to the Vatican. It existed for exactly one purpose — getting a pope out fast — and it was used for real at least twice, most famously by Clement VII, who ran the length of it to escape into the castle while Rome was being sacked by mutinous imperial troops in 1527.
Did you know? Hadrian's ashes were laid here with those of his wife Sabina and his first adopted son, Lucius Aelius.
02 Trajan's Column
Colonna Traiana
Italy · 0.3 km from Rome41.896° N 12.484° E
Raffaele pagani · CC BY-SA 4.0 The column originally stood between the Greek and Latin halls of the Ulpian Library, whose upper floors gave readers a closer view of the reliefs. After Trajan's death in 117 the Senate had his ashes placed in golden urns inside the base. His statue on top vanished in the Middle Ages, and since 1587 the column has been crowned by a bronze Saint Peter placed by Pope Sixtus V. Because pollution has blurred the marble, plaster casts made in the 19th and 20th centuries are sometimes easier to read: complete sets can be seen in Bucharest and in the Cast Courts of London's Victoria and Albert Museum.
Did you know? The carved band is not uniform: it widens from about 1 metre near the bottom to about 1.2 metres higher up, helping viewers read the upper scenes.
03 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 By the 16th century about six metres of the monument lay buried under the rising ground level and the emperor's statue had long vanished. In 1589 Pope Sixtus V had the architect Domenico Fontana restore it: he dug out the base, repaired the cracks and crowned it with the bronze Saint Paul that still stands on top. Fontana also reclad the pedestal with marble and new inscriptions, one of which wrongly credits the column to Antoninus Pius.
04 Vittoriano (Victor Emmanuel II Monument), Rome
Vittoriano
Italy · 0.4 km from Rome41.895° N 12.483° E
Image by serghei_topor from Pixabay Building it meant clearing a whole medieval quarter at the foot of the Capitoline, and the dazzling white stone still sits uneasily among the warm ochres of old Rome. That tension is the point of visiting. From the upper terraces, reached by stairs or by a glass lift added in 2007, the historic city is laid out in every direction, domes, ruins and roofs spreading to the hills. The building also houses the Central Museum of the Risorgimento, devoted to the story of Italian unification.
Did you know? Sacconi's design was not the first winner: an 1880 international competition with 311 entries was won by the French architect Henri-Paul Nénot.
05 Trevi Fountain
Fontana di Trevi
Italy · 0.4 km from Rome41.901° N 12.483° E
Image by jdegheest from Pixabay Those coins aren't just souvenirs of the ritual — city workers sweep or vacuum roughly €3,000 out of the basin every day, and the annual total, somewhere around €1.4 to €1.5 million, is handed over to the Catholic charity Caritas, which uses it to help fund a soup kitchen, a food bank and welfare programs across Rome. Every wish thrown away here is, in a very literal sense, paying for somebody else's dinner.
Did you know? Salvi is said to have placed a large stone vase on the right side to block a barber's sign he disliked; Romans call it the 'Ace of Cups'.
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 in Italy?
- On our list, Castel Sant'Angelo ranks first, followed by Trajan's Column and Column of Marcus Aurelius.
- What was Castel Sant'Angelo originally?
- It was built as the mausoleum of Emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century AD. Over the Middle Ages it became a fortress and refuge for the popes, connected to the Vatican by the elevated Passetto di Borgo.
- Why do people throw coins into the Trevi Fountain?
- Tradition says that a coin tossed over the shoulder into the fountain ensures a return to Rome. The coins are collected regularly and donated to charity.
- What does Trajan's Column depict?
- Its spiral relief shows Emperor Trajan's two wars against the Dacians in the early 2nd century AD, in scenes of marching, building and battle that wind around the shaft from bottom to top.
- How many monuments are on this list in Italy?
- The list covers 5 monuments.