The Most Striking Skyscrapers Seen on Screen in the World
6 places in 5 countries · updated 5 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most striking skyscrapers seen on screen in the world are Taipei 101 (Taiwan), Petronas Towers (Malaysia) and Burj Khalifa (United Arab Emirates). The list covers 6 skyscrapers seen on screen in 5 countries. The United States has the most, with 2. Last updated 5 October 2026.
A skyscraper is built to be seen from far away, which makes it a natural film star. One establishing shot of a tower tells the audience which city they are in, and the height that architects fight for in engineering terms turns into suspense the moment a character steps outside a window. The towers that keep returning to the screen are the ones with a silhouette nobody confuses with another: a spire, a pair of twins, a needle that disappears into cloud.
The Empire State Building has held that role since King Kong climbed it in 1933, and the stainless-steel crown of its neighbour, the Chrysler Building, remains the most recognisable Art Deco top in New York. In Kuala Lumpur, the Petronas Towers, the tallest buildings in the world from 1998 to 2004, are joined by a skybridge between their 41st and 42nd floors, and the 1999 heist film Entrapment built its climax around them.
Further east, Taipei 101 rises in eight stacked sections that recall a bamboo stalk and holds a giant tuned mass damper that steadies the tower in typhoons and earthquakes. The Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the tallest building in the world since 2010, gave Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol its best-known scene, with Tom Cruise climbing the glass facade himself. In London, Renzo Piano's Shard, finished in 2012, ends in broken glass planes that seem to dissolve into the sky over the Thames.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Taipei 101 | Skyscraper | Taiwan | |
| 2 | Petronas Towers | Skyscraper | Malaysia | |
| 3 | Burj Khalifa | Skyscraper | United Arab Emirates | |
| 4 | The Shard | Skyscraper | United Kingdom | |
| 5 | Empire State Building | Skyscraper | United States | |
| 6 | Chrysler Building | Skyscraper | United States |
01 Taipei 101
Taiwan · 0.4 km from Taipei25.034° N 121.565° E
Image by george17168 from Pixabay The single most photographed part of Taipei 101 isn't visible from the street. Between the 87th and 92nd floors hangs a bright yellow steel sphere weighing 660 tonnes — the largest tuned mass damper ever installed in a building, and one of the few designed to be seen rather than hidden.
Did you know? In January 2026 Alex Honnold climbed the outside of the tower without ropes in about an hour and a half, in an authorised free solo.
02 Petronas Towers
Malaysia · 3.2 km from Kuala Lumpur3.158° N 101.712° E
Image by Pexels from Pixabay 9 metres. The Argentine-American architect César Pelli designed them for the Malaysian state oil company. He deliberately drew on Islamic geometry: each tower's floor plan is an eight-pointed star made of two overlapping squares, with rounded lobes fitted into the angles to gain office space. The steel and glass cladding repeats the pattern as it steps up towards the spires.
Did you know? Climber Alain Robert was stopped at the 60th floor in 1997 and again ten years later, before scaling Tower Two barehanded in 2009.
03 Burj Khalifa
United Arab Emirates · 2.3 km from Dubai25.197° N 55.274° E
Image by JESHOOTS-com from Pixabay 8 metres to the tip of its spire, the Burj Khalifa has been the tallest building on Earth since it opened in January 2010, taking the title from Taipei 101. It rises out of Downtown Dubai beside Sheikh Zayed Road, and it was conceived less as an office tower than as the anchor of an entire new district: the Dubai Mall, an artificial lake, hotels and residential blocks were all planned around it.
Did you know? During Ramadan, residents above the 150th floor break their fast a few minutes later than those at street level, because they see the sun set later.
04 The Shard
United Kingdom · 2.2 km from London51.504° N 0.087° W
Ввласенко · CC BY-SA 3.0 6 m over London Bridge station, the tallest building in the United Kingdom and in Western Europe.
Did you know? The tower appeared on screen before it existed: Children of Men, released in 2006 and set in 2027, added it to London's skyline with a model and CGI.
05 Empire State Building
United States · 3.1 km from New York City40.748° N 73.986° W
Image by Olga_Fil from Pixabay The Empire State Building is the skyscraper against which other tall buildings are still measured, and it earned that status in a single burst of work at the start of the Great Depression. It stands on the west side of Fifth Avenue between 33rd and 34th Streets, on the site of the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
Did you know? On 28 July 1945 a B-25 bomber flying in thick fog struck the north face between the 78th and 80th floors, killing 14 people.
06 Chrysler Building
United States · 3.7 km from New York City40.751° N 73.976° W
Image by RJA1988 from Pixabay The Chrysler Building is the purest expression of the optimism New York built for itself at the end of the 1920s. It was designed by William Van Alen and paid for by Walter P. Chrysler out of his own pocket, as an investment for his children rather than as a headquarters for his car company.
Did you know? Van Alen sued Walter Chrysler for his unpaid architect's fee and won, but the lawsuit hurt his reputation so badly that he received few major commissions afterwards.
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 striking skyscrapers seen on screen in the world?
- On our list, Taipei 101 (Taiwan) ranks first, followed by Petronas Towers (Malaysia) and Burj Khalifa (United Arab Emirates).
- Which country has the most skyscrapers seen on screen in the world?
- In our collection, the most come from the United States (2), Malaysia (1) and Taiwan (1).
- Did Tom Cruise really climb the Burj Khalifa?
- Yes. For Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011) he performed the climb on the outside of the tower himself, secured by cables that were later removed digitally.
- Which building does King Kong climb?
- In the original 1933 King Kong, the ape climbs the Empire State Building, which had opened in New York only two years earlier.
- What is inside Taipei 101 that keeps it stable?
- A tuned mass damper: a steel sphere of several hundred tonnes suspended between the upper floors that sways against the building's motion and reduces movement in strong winds and earthquakes.
- How many skyscrapers seen on screen are on this list in the world?
- The list covers 6 skyscrapers seen on screen in 5 countries. The United States has the most, with 2.