The Most Remarkable UNESCO-Listed Necropolises in the World
9 places in 8 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most remarkable UNESCO-listed necropolises in the world are Valley of the Kings (Egypt), Shah-i-Zinda (Uzbekistan) and Hegra (Saudi Arabia). The list covers 9 UNESCO-listed necropolises in 8 countries. Italy has the most, with 2. Last updated 14 October 2026.
A necropolis is a city built for the dead, and the ones on the World Heritage list show how differently cultures have imagined that city. Some cut their tombs deep into cliffs to hide them; others raised domes of glazed tile in full view of the living. Because the dead were rarely moved, these sites often preserve a culture's art and beliefs more completely than its towns and palaces do.
The Valley of the Kings on the west bank of the Nile at Luxor held the rock-cut tombs of New Kingdom pharaohs, painted with texts meant to guide the king through the night. Hegra in northwestern Arabia, the first World Heritage Site in Saudi Arabia, carved more than a hundred monumental Nabataean tomb facades into isolated sandstone outcrops. In Sicily, the Necropolis of Pantalica hollows thousands of small chamber tombs into limestone gorges, and in Cyprus the Tombs of the Kings at Paphos imitate houses with Doric columns underground, though they held local aristocrats rather than royalty.
Other traditions build upward. Shah-i-Zinda in Samarkand lines a narrow street with mausoleums whose blue and turquoise tilework is among the finest of the Timurid era. Makli near Thatta in Pakistan spreads across a plateau with tombs of carved sandstone and glazed brick, one of the largest funerary sites anywhere. The medieval stećci at Radimlja are tombstones carved with figures, spirals and hunting scenes, and the Western Xia Imperial Tombs near Yinchuan preserve the earthen mounds of the Tangut emperors.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Valley of the Kings | Archaeological site | Egypt | ✓ |
| 2 | Shah-i-Zinda | Necropolis | Uzbekistan | ✓ |
| 3 | Hegra | Necropolis | Saudi Arabia | ✓ |
| 4 | Necropolis of Pantalica | Necropolis | Italy | ✓ |
| 5 | Makli Necropolis | Necropolis | Pakistan | ✓ |
| 6 | Necropolis of Monterozzi | Necropolis | Italy | ✓ |
| 7 | Necropolis of stecci at Radimlja, the historic site | Necropolis | Bosnia and Herzegovina | ✓ |
| 8 | Tombs of the Kings, Paphos | Necropolis | Cyprus | ✓ |
| 9 | Western Xia Imperial Tombs | Necropolis | People's Republic of China | ✓ |
01 Valley of the Kings
Egypt · 6.5 km from Luxor25.740° N 32.602° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Freiheitsjunkie from Pixabay 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.
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.
02 Shah-i-Zinda
Uzbekistan · 3.8 km from Samarkand39.663° N 66.988° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by LoggaWiggler from Pixabay 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.
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.
03 Hegra
Saudi Arabia26.814° N 37.947° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Following Hadrian · CC BY-SA 2.0 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.
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.
04 Necropolis of Pantalica
Pantalica
Italy · 28.1 km from Syracuse37.133° N 14.983° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Danny Krull · CC BY-SA 2.0 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.
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.
05 Makli Necropolis
Pakistan24.761° N 67.900° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Meralkocak · CC BY-SA 4.0 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.
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.
06 Necropolis of Monterozzi
Necropoli dei Monterozzi
Italy · 16.8 km from Civitavecchia42.250° N 11.770° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Gsimonov · Public domain 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.
07 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
Joanne Goldby from Birmingham, UK · CC BY-SA 2.0 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.
More about Necropolis of stecci at Radimlja, the historic site →
08 Tombs of the Kings, Paphos
Τάφοι των Βασιλέων
Cyprus · 2.8 km from Paphos34.776° N 32.405° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by dimitrisvetsikas1969 from Pixabay 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.
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.
09 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 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.
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.
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 UNESCO-listed necropolises in the world?
- On our list, Valley of the Kings (Egypt) ranks first, followed by Shah-i-Zinda (Uzbekistan) and Hegra (Saudi Arabia).
- Which country has the most UNESCO-listed necropolises in the world?
- In our collection, the most come from Italy (2), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1) and Cyprus (1).
- Were kings buried in the Tombs of the Kings in Paphos?
- No. The rock-cut tombs date from the Hellenistic and Roman periods and held high officials and wealthy families; the name comes from their grandeur, not from royal burials.
- What are stećci?
- Monumental medieval tombstones found mainly in Bosnia and Herzegovina and neighbouring countries, often carved with figures, crosses, spirals and hunting scenes. Radimlja is one of the best-known groups.
- What is Hegra?
- A Nabataean city in northwestern Saudi Arabia, also known as Mada'in Salih, whose monumental tombs were cut into sandstone in the 1st century BC and 1st century AD. In 2008 it became the country's first World Heritage Site.
- How many UNESCO-listed necropolises are on this list in the world?
- The list covers 9 UNESCO-listed necropolises in 8 countries. Italy has the most, with 2.