The Most Remarkable Necropolises in Asia
8 places in 7 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most remarkable necropolises in Asia are Shah-i-Zinda (Uzbekistan), Hegra (Saudi Arabia) and Naqsh-e Rustam (Iran). The list covers 8 necropolises in 7 countries. Turkey has the most, with 2. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Across Asia, the dead were often given more permanent homes than the living. Persian kings, Nabataean merchants and Lycian nobles cut their tombs into living rock so they would last forever, Central Asian rulers gathered their family mausoleums along sacred avenues, and in the mountains of the Caucasus whole villages of stone crypts were built on hillsides. These necropolises preserve art and architecture that has otherwise vanished.
Shah-i-Zinda in Samarkand is a street of mausoleums climbing a hill, most of them from the Timurid era and sheathed in turquoise and cobalt tilework. At Hegra in Saudi Arabia, the Nabataeans carved monumental tomb facades into sandstone outcrops in the desert, including the solitary Qasr al-Farid cut from a single rock. Naqsh-e Rustam in Iran holds the cross-shaped rock tombs of Achaemenid kings high on a cliff, with Sasanian reliefs carved beneath them. Makli Necropolis in Pakistan spreads across a ridge near Thatta with stone tombs decorated in carving and glazed tiles.
The rest are just as striking. In Turkey, the rock tombs of Kaunos look down from a cliff over the Dalyan River with facades like Greek temples, and those of Myra crowd a cliff face in the style of Lycian timber houses translated into stone. The Western Xia Imperial Tombs are great earthen mounds rising from the steppe at the foot of the Helan Mountains, and Dargavs in North Ossetia is a hillside of whitewashed stone crypts with stepped pyramidal roofs.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Shah-i-Zinda | Necropolis | Uzbekistan | ✓ |
| 2 | Hegra | Necropolis | Saudi Arabia | ✓ |
| 3 | Naqsh-e Rustam | Necropolis | Iran | |
| 4 | Kaunos | Necropolis | Turkey | |
| 5 | Makli Necropolis | Necropolis | Pakistan | ✓ |
| 6 | Western Xia Imperial Tombs | Necropolis | People's Republic of China | ✓ |
| 7 | Dargavs Necropolis | Necropolis | Russia | |
| 8 | Myra Rock Tombs | Necropolis | Turkey |
01 Shah-i-Zinda
Uzbekistan · 3.8 km from Samarkand39.663° N 66.988° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by LoggaWiggler from Pixabay The ensemble grew from the eleventh century to the nineteenth and now counts more than twenty buildings, arranged in lower, middle and upper groups linked by domed four-arched passages. Most of what the visitor sees dates from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when Timur's family, generals and clergy commissioned tombs here: the single-chambered tomb of his niece, built in 1372, the mausoleum of his sister Shirin Bika Aka opposite it, an unusual eight-sided crypt, and in the upper group the Khodja Akhmad mausoleum of the 1340s. At the foot of the complex, the entrance gate and a double-domed mausoleum were raised under Ulugh Beg in 1434–1435.
Did you know? Excavations on the eastern slope of the Afrasiyab hill uncovered the remains of 11th–12th-century mausoleums from the Karakhanid era, long before Timur's builders arrived.
02 Hegra
Saudi Arabia26.814° N 37.947° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Following Hadrian · CC BY-SA 2.0 The facades mix influences from across the ancient trading world, borrowing from Assyria, Phoenicia, Egypt and Hellenistic Alexandria, and archaeologists distinguish a local style they call the Hegra type. What makes them unusual is that many carry an inscription above the door, a kind of legal deed naming the owner, who could be a man or a woman, stating who had the right to be buried inside and warning against misuse, dated by the reign of the Nabataean king. The largest and most photographed tomb, Qasr al-Farid, the Lonely Castle, stands apart from the others, its facade rising more than twenty metres.
Did you know? Thirty-one tombs of the Qasr al-Walad group are decorated with carved birds, human faces and imaginary creatures.
03 Naqsh-e Rustam
Iran · 21.4 km from Marvdasht29.989° N 52.875° E
Stefan Krasowski from New York, NY, USA · CC BY 2.0 At ground level, the Sasanian kings (3rd–7th centuries AD) added their own reliefs below the Achaemenid tombs, deliberately linking themselves to the older dynasty. The most famous shows Shapur I on horseback with the Roman emperor Valerian kneeling before him. Valerian was captured at the Battle of Edessa in 260, the only Roman emperor ever taken prisoner. Other panels show investiture scenes, such as that of Narseh, horsemen in combat, and royal audiences; one faint relief traces back to the Elamites and was carved over by the Sasanians.
Did you know? The oldest carving on the cliff is an Elamite relief about 7 by 2.5 metres, later recut into an audience scene of the Sasanian king Bahram II.
04 Kaunos
Turkey36.828° N 28.626° E
Image by LoggaWiggler from Pixabay Kaunos stood on the border between two ancient regions: the river, known in antiquity as the Calbys, divided Caria from Lycia, and the city mixed influences from both. Legend credits its foundation to a king named Kaunos, a grandson of Apollo, while archaeology shows habitation back to at least the ninth century BC. Herodotus records that the people of Kaunos resisted the Persian general Harpagus in 546 BC. The city flourished most under the Carian satrap Mausolus in the fourth century BC, who gave it new walls, an agora and temples to Greek gods.
Did you know? Its inner harbour, now the reed-fringed Sülüklü Göl or Lake of the Leeches, could be sealed off with chains.
05 Makli Necropolis
Pakistan24.761° N 67.900° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Meralkocak · CC BY-SA 4.0 Tradition credits the start of the necropolis to the Sufi saint and scholar Sheikh Hamad Jamali, who founded a khanqah on the hill and was buried there; the 14th-century Samma ruler Jam Tamachi, his devotee, asked to lie near him, and royalty, saints and scholars followed. A local story says the name Makli means "little Mecca", after a pilgrim who declared the hill his Mecca, though historians have proposed other origins. The Samma tombs gather in the north of the site. 4 metres a side, never given its dome, wrapped in fourteen carved bands that mix Quranic verses with motifs drawn from Hindu and Gujarati temple building, and fronted by a carved jharoka balcony.
Did you know? Some scholars think the cube-like shape of Jam Nizamuddin II's tomb, completed in 1510, may echo the Kaaba in Mecca.
06 Western Xia Imperial Tombs
People's Republic of China · 25.1 km from Yinchuan38.435° N 105.987° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Thebrainchamber1 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The imperial mausoleums follow a common plan. A rectangular outer wall with paired gate towers on the south encloses stele pavilions, a barbican and an inner precinct with corner watchtowers. The tomb mound itself, made of rammed earth, stands off-centre in the north-west of the precinct and reaches up to 23 metres high and 30 metres across. Holes for timber beams and the quantities of roof tiles found around each mound show that these cores were once dressed as tiered towers with brick facing, tiled eaves and sculpture, a blend of mausoleum and temple with Buddhist features.
Did you know? After 1949, local heritage officials at first took the mounds for a Tang dynasty cemetery; systematic excavation only began in 1972.
07 Dargavs Necropolis
Russia · 29.6 km from Vladikavkaz42.841° N 44.446° E
Александр Байдуков · CC BY-SA 4.0 The crypts were in use from roughly the fourteenth century into the first decades of the nineteenth. Each belonged to a single family, and generations were laid in the same building one above another, which is why the complex is thought to hold remains of thousands of people. There are two main types. Semi-subterranean vaults sit partly in the slope, while the tall above-ground crypts rise up to several storeys, with wooden floors inside and openings at different heights.
Did you know? Excavations have recovered more than 1,600 objects, among them children's sleds, bronze thimbles, lead bullets and Russian glass bottles made in 1816 to 1825.
08 Myra Rock Tombs
Myra Kaya Mezarları
Turkey36.259° N 29.984° E
Aerdemsenturk · CC BY-SA 4.0 There are several groups. The so-called sea necropolis rises just northwest of the Roman theatre, where the tombs crowd the cliff directly above the seating; the river necropolis lies about 1.5 kilometres up the Demre stream, and its finest monument is the Lion Tomb, also known as the Painted Tomb. Some tombs carry reliefs — one shows the dead man among his relatives — and many have inscriptions in the Lycian language. When the English traveller Charles Fellows saw them in 1840, some still showed their original colouring in red, yellow and blue.
Did you know? The city's Lycian name is thought to have been Muri, possibly derived from the myrrh tree.
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 necropolises in Asia?
- On our list, Shah-i-Zinda (Uzbekistan) ranks first, followed by Hegra (Saudi Arabia) and Naqsh-e Rustam (Iran).
- Which country has the most necropolises in Asia?
- In our collection, the most come from Turkey (2), Iran (1) and Pakistan (1).
- Who is buried at Naqsh-e Rustam?
- The four rock tombs are attributed to Achaemenid kings: Darius I, whose tomb is identified by inscription, and by tradition Xerxes I, Artaxerxes I and Darius II. They are cut high into the cliff in the shape of a cross.
- What is Qasr al-Farid?
- Qasr al-Farid, the Lonely Castle, is an unfinished Nabataean tomb at Hegra, carved into a free-standing sandstone boulder in the first century AD. Its unfinished lower part shows that the Nabataeans carved their tombs from the top down.
- Why is Dargavs called the City of the Dead?
- Dargavs is a cluster of stone crypts on a hillside in North Ossetia, where local families laid their dead for generations. From a distance the rows of small white houses with pyramidal roofs look like a village.
- How many necropolises are on this list in Asia?
- The list covers 8 necropolises in 7 countries. Turkey has the most, with 2.