The Most Remarkable Necropolises in the World

18 places in 12 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Giza pyramid complex

   Egypt · 6.7 km from Giza29.976° N 31.133° E

   

   The Giza plateau, on the edge of the Western Desert above modern Giza, holds the most famous group of monuments on Earth: the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, the Great Sphinx, and the temples, causeways and cemeteries that served them. All were built during Egypt's Fourth Dynasty, roughly 2600 to 2500 BC. Giza is the northernmost part of the Memphis necropolis, a World Heritage Site since 1979 that extends south through Abusir, Saqqara and Dahshur.

   Did you know? The three great pyramids are aligned to the cardinal directions with an error of only about one-fifteenth of a degree.

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2. 02 Valley of the Kings

   Egypt · 6.5 km from Luxor25.740° N 32.602° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   For nearly five centuries, from about 1539 to 1075 BC, the pharaohs of the New Kingdom were buried not under pyramids but in tombs cut deep into a dry valley on the west bank of the Nile opposite Thebes, modern Luxor. The valley lies beneath al-Qurn, a pyramid-shaped peak that may have been part of its appeal, and its hidden entrances were meant to defeat the robbers who had emptied the older royal tombs. Mortuary temples for the cult of the dead kings were built separately, down by the fields. Some 65 tombs and chambers are now known, from simple pits to KV5, the vast burial complex of the sons of Ramesses II, with more than 120 rooms.

   Did you know? Workmen who cut and painted the royal tombs lived in the nearby village of Deir el-Medina, and their records include what may be history's first documented labour strike.

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3. 03 Sillustani

   Peru · 18.2 km from Puno15.721° S 70.158° W

   

   On the grassy slopes above Lake Umayo, high on the Peruvian Altiplano, stand the stone burial towers of Sillustani. Some are squat and ruined, others rise as tall, carefully dressed stone cylinders, and against the wide blue of the lake and the bare hills of the plateau they form one of the most haunting funerary landscapes in the Andes.

   Did you know? Peru's tourism inventory counts 91 funerary towers spread over roughly 60 hectares of the peninsula, along with terraces, corrals, stairways and carved stones.

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4. 04 Shah-i-Zinda

   Uzbekistan · 3.8 km from Samarkand39.663° N 66.988° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Shah-i-Zinda is less a single monument than a street of the dead: a narrow lane climbing the slope south of the old Afrosiyob hill in Samarkand, lined on both sides by mausoleums whose portals are sheathed in glazed tilework. The name means "the Living King" and comes from Qutham ibn Abbas, a cousin of the Prophet Muhammad who reached Samarkand with the Arab conquest in the seventh century. Local tradition holds that he was beheaded while praying, took up his own head and walked down into a deep well, where he lives on. His shrine made this hillside holy ground, and for some eight centuries the powerful wanted to be buried close to it.

   Did you know? Until the 16th century the complex was known simply as the Mazar of the Shah; the name Shah-i-Zinda, the Living King, only took hold afterwards.

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5. 05 Hegra

   Saudi Arabia26.814° N 37.947° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Hegra, also known as Mada'in Salih or al-Hijr, was the southern outpost of the Nabataeans, the trading people whose capital was Petra. It was their second city, and in one respect it surpasses Petra: its rock-cut tombs are often better preserved. Across the desert plain north of AlUla, isolated sandstone outcrops rise from the sand, and into their faces the Nabataeans carved 131 monumental tombs, mostly in the 1st century AD, spread over about 13 km. In 2008 it became Saudi Arabia's first World Heritage Site.

   Did you know? The town drew its water from about 130 wells, some 4 to 7 metres wide, dug down to a water table about 20 metres below the surface.

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6. 06 Necropolis of Pantalica

   Pantalica

   Italy · 28.1 km from Syracuse37.133° N 14.983° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   In the limestone gorges of southeastern Sicily, thousands of small rectangular openings honeycomb the cliffs like the cells of a vast hive. Each is the mouth of a tomb cut into the rock between roughly the thirteenth and the seventh centuries BC. Pantalica was long thought to hold more than 5,000 such chambers; recent counts put the figure at just under 4,000, still enough to make it one of the largest rock-cut cemeteries in the Mediterranean. The setting is as striking as the tombs: a high plateau almost surrounded by the deep valleys of the Anapo and Calcinara rivers, thick with vegetation along the valley floors.

   Did you know? No trace survives of the prehistoric houses; Paolo Orsi argued the people lived in light huts of wood, reeds and straw that weather simply erased.

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7. 07 Naqsh-e Rustam

   Iran · 21.4 km from Marvdasht29.989° N 52.875° E

   

   Naqsh-e Rustam is a cliff face north-west of Persepolis in Fars province where the kings of Persia carved their tombs and their victories over more than a thousand years. High in the rock are four identical tombs of Achaemenid kings. Each has a cross-shaped facade: the middle arm imitates a palace portico with bull-headed capitals, the doorway leads into a small burial chamber, and above it the king stands on a platform held up by figures representing the peoples of the empire, facing a fire altar under a winged symbol. Only the tomb of Darius the Great (died 486 BC) is identified for certain, by the long inscription on its facade; the others are usually attributed to Xerxes I, Artaxerxes I and Darius II.

   Did you know? The name means 'Mural of Rostam', after the hero of Persian legend.

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8. 08 Kaunos

   Turkey36.828° N 28.626° E

   

   High on a sheer cliff above the reed-lined Dalyan River, the façades of rock-cut tombs look out over the water like small temples, with columns, pediments and doorways carved straight into the stone. These are the tombs of Kaunos, an ancient port city whose ruins lie on the hills just across the river from the town of Dalyan, in south-western Turkey.

   Did you know? Kaunos had its own Carian name, Kbid, and a Greek and Carian bilingual inscription found here in 1996 helped scholars crack the Carian alphabet.

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9. 09 Makli Necropolis

   Pakistan24.761° N 67.900° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Across a low, dry plateau on the edge of the Indus delta, hundreds of thousands of tombs spread over some 10 square kilometres: carved sandstone cenotaphs, brick mausoleums glazed in blue and turquoise, domed pavilions on slender columns, and stone enclosures carved so densely with rosettes, calligraphy and geometric bands that from a distance they look like temples. Makli, outside the old Sindhi capital of Thatta, is one of the largest burial grounds on earth, with an estimated half a million to a million graves built over about four centuries, and since 1981 it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site as a record of Sindhi civilisation between the 14th and 18th centuries.

   Did you know? Unusually for Muslim graves, a single frieze of local ducks is the only figurative carving on Jam Nizamuddin II's tomb; every other band is geometric or calligraphic.

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10. 10 Necropolis of Monterozzi

    Necropoli dei Monterozzi

    Italy · 16.8 km from Civitavecchia42.250° N 11.770° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    On a long limestone ridge east of Tarquinia, the Etruscans buried their dead for the better part of a thousand years. Around 6,000 graves have been identified on the Monterozzi hill, from Villanovan cremations of the Iron Age to burials of the Roman period, and in the nineteenth century some six hundred earth mounds still broke the skyline. What makes the place singular, though, lies underground: roughly two hundred of the rock-cut chambers carry wall paintings, an unrivalled gallery of Etruscan life and belief.

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11. 11 Necropolis of stecci at Radimlja, the historic site

    Nekropola Radimlja

    Bosnia and Herzegovina · 29.9 km from Mostar43.093° N 17.923° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Stećci — massive carved medieval tombstones — are found only in the western Balkans, and Radimlja, in the Vidovo field just outside Stolac in Herzegovina, is the most celebrated site where they can be seen. In 2016 it was included in the World Heritage listing of stećci cemeteries shared by Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia.

    Did you know? The epitaphs name three stonemasons, Miogost, Bolašin Bogačić and Ratko Brativonić, and Miogost described himself simply as a smith.

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12. 12 Tombs of the Kings, Paphos

    Τάφοι των Βασιλέων

    Cyprus · 2.8 km from Paphos34.776° N 32.405° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Tombs of the Kings is a large necropolis on the coast just north of Paphos harbour, where the dead of Hellenistic and Roman Paphos were buried in chambers cut out of the solid rock. Despite the name, no kings lie here. The tombs belonged to the town's aristocracy and high officials, and the grandeur of the largest of them gave the site its name. They were used from the 4th century BC until the 3rd century AD, when Paphos was the capital of Cyprus under Ptolemaic and then Roman rule.

    Did you know? The name is doubly misleading: by the time these tombs were cut, the old city-kingdoms of Cyprus had already ceased to exist.

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13. 13 Western Xia Imperial Tombs

    People's Republic of China · 25.1 km from Yinchuan38.435° N 105.987° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    At the foot of the Helan Mountains, on the dry plain west of Yinchuan, a line of great earthen mounds rises from the steppe like weathered beehives. They are the tombs of the emperors of Western Xia, a state founded by the Tangut people that ruled much of northwest China from 1038 until its destruction by Genghis Khan's Mongols in 1227. The burial ground covers some 50 square kilometres and holds nine imperial mausoleums and around 250 tombs of relatives and officials, strung over about 12 km along the mountain foothills. In 2025 UNESCO inscribed it on the World Heritage List as the Xixia Imperial Tombs.

    Did you know? Chinese writers often call the site the "Pyramids of the East", a nickname earned by its tall, tapering earthen mounds rising from the plain.

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14. 14 Necropolis Banditaccia

    Necropoli della Banditaccia

    Italy · 26.9 km from Civitavecchia42.006° N 12.100° E

    

    Outside the hill town of Cerveteri, the ancient Etruscan city of Caere laid out a second city for its dead, and the Banditaccia is what remains of it. Great round tumuli of tuff, capped with grass, sit along streets cut into the soft volcanic rock, with rows of smaller square tombs lined up between them like terraced houses. Walking the sunken lanes between these mounds, with the walls of rock rising on either side, is one of the most complete experiences of an ancient city of any kind that survives in Italy.

    Did you know? The Tomb of the Reliefs is unique among Etruscan tombs: instead of the usual wall paintings, its chamber is decorated with painted stucco reliefs.

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15. 15 Sarcophagi of Karajía

    Sarcófagos de Karajía

    Peru · 18.3 km from Chachapoyas6.162° S 78.021° W

    

    High on a sheer cliff above a ravine in the mountains of northern Peru, a row of tall clay figures stands looking out over the valley. These are the Sarcophagi of Karajía, burial capsules of the Chachapoya people, up to about 2.5 metres high, each with a long face and a jutting, exaggerated jaw. Set in a shallow cave more than 200 metres above the bottom of the gorge, they were beyond the reach of looters, and as a result they are among the best-preserved monuments of their kind.

    Did you know? The burial cave sits at around 2,550 metres above sea level, in a cliff above a gorge in the Utcubamba basin.

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16. 16 Revash

    Mausoleos de Revash

    Peru · 34.4 km from Chachapoyas6.541° S 77.856° W

    

    High on a limestone cliff above the Utcubamba valley in northern Peru, a row of small painted houses clings to a ledge as if a village had been shrunk and tucked into the rock. They are tombs. The funerary complex of Revash was built by the Chachapoya, the people of the cloud forests of the eastern Andes, and archaeologists Henry and Paule Reichlen, who studied it in the mid-20th century, dated it to around the 14th century. The ledge sits at roughly 2,800 metres above sea level on the cliff known as Cerro Carbón.

    Did you know? Archaeologists working inside the tombs found the skeletons of eleven adults and one child, along with musical instruments and tools made of bone.

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17. 17 Dargavs Necropolis

    Russia · 29.6 km from Vladikavkaz42.841° N 44.446° E

    

    High in a mountain valley of North Ossetia, on a grassy slope above the village of Dargavs, stands a cluster of close to a hundred white stone houses with steep, stepped roofs. They are not houses for the living. This is the Dargavs necropolis, known locally as the City of the Dead, the largest of the family burial grounds that medieval Ossetians built in the valleys of the central Caucasus, and seen from the road below it looks like a small, silent town laid out along the hillside.

    Did you know? The site holds about 95 crypts, and because generations were stacked inside them, an estimated 10,000 people may have been buried here.

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18. 18 Myra Rock Tombs

    Myra Kaya Mezarları

    Turkey36.259° N 29.984° E

    

    The cliff above the ancient city of Myra is one of the most striking sights on the Lycian coast of Turkey: a honeycomb of tomb fronts cut straight into the rock face, stacked one above another as if a whole village had been carved into the mountain. The Lycians buried their dead in tombs that imitated their own timber houses, and at Myra the carvers reproduced the joists, beams, door panels and projecting roof ends in stone with great care, and they are counted among the finest translations of Lycian timber architecture into rock. Most date to the 4th century BC, and inscriptions and coins show the city existed at least from the 5th century BC.

    Did you know? In all, 104 rock tombs have been recorded at Myra, with 23 inscriptions between them, 13 in Lycian and 10 in Greek.

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