The Most Striking War Memorials in the World
15 places in 11 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most striking war memorials in the world are Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Germany), Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Japan) and Menin Gate, Ypres (Belgium). The list covers 15 war memorials in 11 countries. France has the most, with 3. Last updated 13 October 2026.
A war memorial has to carry what words cannot: the scale of loss, the names of those who never came home, the silence after a battle. The strongest ones do it through form rather than ornament. A gate inscribed with tens of thousands of names, an ossuary built over the bones of the unidentified, a concrete flower rising from a former camp, a figure with a raised sword on a hill above a river. Their power comes from placement and restraint as much as from size.
This collection crosses a century of conflict. The Douaumont Ossuary stands on the battlefield of Verdun, and the Menin Gate in Ypres records the missing of the Ypres Salient. Walter Allward's twin pylons crown Vimy Ridge, while Lutyens' Thiepval Memorial rises above the Somme. In Hiroshima, the ruined dome left standing near the hypocentre is kept as it was. The former Yugoslavia contributes some of the boldest abstract memorials of the 20th century: Bogdan Bogdanović's Stone Flower at Jasenovac, the Sutjeska memorial at Tjentište and the Makedonium in Kruševo. In Volgograd, The Motherland Calls towers over Mamayev Kurgan.
The memorials were chosen for how they look and the list is ordered accordingly. Each has its own text, a photograph credited to its author and a mark on the map, and the section opens country by country on separate pages.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe | War memorial | Germany | |
| 2 | Hiroshima Peace Memorial | War memorial | Japan | ✓ |
| 3 | Menin Gate, Ypres | War memorial | Belgium | |
| 4 | Ilinden Memorial (Makedonium), Kruševo | War memorial | North Macedonia | |
| 5 | Douaumont Ossuary | War memorial | France | |
| 6 | The Motherland Calls | War memorial | Russia | |
| 7 | India Gate | War memorial | India | |
| 8 | Mother Ukraine Monument | War memorial | Ukraine | |
| 9 | Canadian National Vimy Memorial | War memorial | France | |
| 10 | Soviet War Memorial | War memorial | Germany | |
| 11 | Stone Flower | War memorial | Croatia | |
| 12 | Monument to the Revolution of the people of Moslavina | War memorial | Croatia | |
| 13 | Thiepval Memorial | War memorial | France | |
| 14 | Al-Shaheed Monument | War memorial | Iraq | |
| 15 | Valley of Heroes, Tjentište (Sutjeska Memorial) | War memorial | Bosnia and Herzegovina |
01 Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas
Germany · 1.8 km from Berlin52.514° N 13.379° E
Dietmar Rabich · CC BY-SA 4.0 Two blocks from the Brandenburg Gate, on ground where the Berlin Wall's death strip once ran, a field of 2,711 grey concrete blocks tilts gently across 1.9 hectares. Seen from the pavement it looks almost calm: low slabs at the edges, a grid of rows, nothing that announces itself. The memorial to the Jews murdered in Europe works only when you walk into it. The ground sinks beneath you, the stelae rise to more than four and a half metres, the city noise thins out, and within a few steps you are alone in a narrow grey corridor with no sense of where the others have gone.
Did you know? The memorial's 2,711 stelae are arranged in 54 rows running north to south and 87 rows running east to west.
02 Hiroshima Peace Memorial
Japan · 1.3 km from Hiroshima34.396° N 132.454° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
DXR · CC BY-SA 4.0 The building now known across the world as the Atomic Bomb Dome was completed in April 1915 as an exhibition hall for the products of Hiroshima Prefecture. Its designer, the Czech architect Jan Letzel, gave it a distinctive dome that made it a landmark on the riverbank next to the Aioi Bridge. At 8:15 in the morning on 6 August 1945 the first atomic bomb used in war exploded almost directly above it, about 600 metres up and some 150 metres to one side. Everyone inside was killed instantly. Because the blast came from above, the vertical walls and columns held, and the building was one of very few left standing near the hypocentre.
Did you know? The bomb's aiming point was the T-shaped Aioi Bridge nearby, but it missed by about 240 metres and burst above Shima Hospital.
03 Menin Gate, Ypres
Menenpoort
Belgium · 25.9 km from Lille50.852° N 2.891° E
FrDr · CC BY-SA 4.0 Every evening at eight o'clock, traffic through the eastern gateway of Ypres is stopped, and buglers step into the vaulted passage to sound the Last Post. They have done so almost without a break since 2 July 1928. The Menin Gate is at once a monument, a working road through the town's ramparts and the stage of one of the most affecting daily rituals in Europe, and it is worth seeing both by day, when the walls of names can be read in quiet, and at dusk, when the passage fills for the ceremony.
Did you know? Among the names on the walls are eight holders of the Victoria Cross, the highest-ranking being Brigadier-General Charles FitzClarence.
04 Ilinden Memorial (Makedonium), Kruševo
Споменик „Илинден“
North Macedonia · 38.3 km from Bitola41.377° N 21.248° E
Марјан Петковски · CC BY-SA 3.0 Above the small mountain town of Kruševo, a white concrete sphere bristling with rounded, tube-like protrusions sits on Gumenja Hill like something that has landed rather than been built. This is the Ilinden memorial, known locally as the Makedonium, and it is one of the most original works of the Yugoslav era of memorial architecture: part sculpture, part building, and quite unlike anything else in North Macedonia.
Did you know? The dome is often likened to a bozdogan, a spiked Ottoman-era war mace, and stands on Gumenja at about 1,320 metres above sea level.
05 Douaumont Ossuary
Ossuaire de Douaumont
France49.208° N 5.424° E
Image by Signalschwarz from Pixabay On the battlefield outside Verdun, a long, low building of pale stone stretches along the hillside, crowned in its centre by a tall, rounded tower. The Douaumont Ossuary holds the bones of around 130,000 unidentified French and German soldiers who died in the Battle of Verdun, fought over some 300 days from 21 February to 19 December 1916 at a cost of roughly 300,000 dead.
Did you know? On 22 September 1984 François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl stood hand in hand at the ossuary, an image that became a symbol of Franco-German reconciliation.
06 The Motherland Calls
Russia · 4.4 km from Volgograd48.742° N 44.537° E
Image by alex1983 from Pixabay The Motherland Calls stands on top of Mamayev Kurgan, the hill above the Volga in Volgograd that was fought over almost continuously during the Battle of Stalingrad, from September 1942 to January 1943. A woman in a wind-blown robe strides forward with a sword raised in her right hand and her left arm flung back, summoning the country to fight. From the base of the pedestal to the tip of the sword the monument measures 85 metres; the figure alone is 52 metres. When the memorial complex was dedicated on 15 October 1967 it was the tallest statue in the world.
Did you know? The body was modelled on Valentina Izotova, a 26-year-old waitress, with discus thrower Nina Dumbadze also an influence; the face is thought to recall the sculptor's wife.
07 India Gate
India · 3.2 km from New Delhi28.613° N 77.229° E
Image by shalender from Pixabay India Gate is the great sandstone arch that closes the eastern end of Kartavya Path, the ceremonial avenue of New Delhi, and it is first of all a war memorial. It commemorates soldiers of the Indian Army who died between 1914 and 1921, in the First World War on fronts from France and Flanders to Mesopotamia, East Africa and Gallipoli, and in the Third Anglo-Afghan War. More than 13,000 names are carved on its surfaces. The Duke of Connaught laid the foundation stone of what was then called the All India War Memorial on 10 February 1921, and the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, inaugurated it ten years later, on 12 February 1931.
Did you know? The memorial honours about 74,187 Indian Army soldiers who died between 1914 and 1921, yet only 13,313 names are actually inscribed on it.
08 Mother Ukraine Monument
Ukraine · 3.6 km from Kyiv50.426° N 30.563° E
spoilt.exile · CC BY-SA 2.0 On the hills of Pechersk above the Dnipro, next to the monasteries of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, a stainless-steel woman raises a sword and a shield over the city. The statue itself is 62 metres tall; with its base the monument reaches 102 metres and weighs some 560 tonnes. The sword is 16 metres long, the shield 13 by 8 metres. It was opened on Victory Day, 9 May 1981, as the Soviet Union's tribute to the Second World War, and under the name Mother Motherland it joined a family of colossal war memorials across the USSR.
Did you know? In the 1950s the same hillside was considered for twin statues of Lenin and Stalin, each nearly 200 metres tall, but they were never built.
09 Canadian National Vimy Memorial
Mémorial national du Canada à Vimy
France · 10.7 km from Arras50.379° N 2.774° E
Jean-Pol GRANDMONT · CC BY 4.0 On Hill 145, the highest point of Vimy Ridge in northern France, two tall white pylons rise from a broad stone platform and can be seen for miles across the flat mining country of Artois. This is Canada's principal memorial of the First World War, built on the ground Canadian troops took in April 1917, and it is one of the most striking war monuments in Europe: austere from a distance, full of figures and inscriptions up close.
Did you know? Sheep graze the open meadows of the park, because buried unexploded munitions make mowing the grass too dangerous for people.
10 Soviet War Memorial
Sowjetisches Ehrenmal
Germany · 6.4 km from Berlin52.486° N 13.472° E
Marek Śliwecki · CC BY-SA 4.0 The memorial in Treptower Park is the largest of the Soviet war memorials in Berlin, and it is also a cemetery. About 7,000 Red Army soldiers who died in the Battle of Berlin in the spring of 1945 are buried here, out of the roughly 80,000 Soviet dead of that battle. The design came out of a competition held soon after the war and combined the ideas of the architect Yakov Belopolsky, the sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich, the painter Alexander Gorpenko and the engineer Sarra Walerius. More than a thousand labourers, some two hundred stonemasons and ninety sculptors worked on the site, on what had been a sports ground. The bronzes were cast at the Lauchhammer art foundry, and the ensemble opened on 8 May 1949.
Did you know? The model for the bronze soldier was a Red Army private, Ivan Odarchenko, who lived until 2013.
11 Stone Flower
Kameni cvijet
Croatia · 37.9 km from Prijedor45.280° N 16.928° E
Bobonajbolji · CC BY-SA 4.0 On open ground near the Sava river, a single concrete form opens towards the sky. The Stone Flower at Jasenovac rises from a low base like a plant unfolding its petals, and its maker, the Serbian architect and former Partisan Bogdan Bogdanović, described it as a sign of faith in life and of rebirth that overcomes suffering. It stands on the ground of the former Camp III, the brickworks section of the Jasenovac concentration camp, where the Ustaša regime of the Independent State of Croatia killed Serbs, Roma, Jews and Croatian opponents of the regime during the Second World War.
Did you know? The concrete flower rises about 24 metres above the former camp grounds.
12 Monument to the Revolution of the people of Moslavina
Spomenik revolucije naroda Moslavine
Croatia45.641° N 16.778° E
Plamen at Serbian Wikipedia · Public domain On a wooded slope of Moslavačka gora, the low range of hills east of Zagreb, a huge abstract form in concrete seems to hover above the grass: a central body with ribbed arms flung out horizontally to either side, two on one wing and three on the other, like a bird or a winged figure caught at the moment of take-off. The Monument to the Revolution of the People of Moslavina, near the village of Podgarić, is about 10 metres high and some 20 metres across, and is one of the best known of the many Yugoslav memorials to the Second World War.
Did you know? Alan Walker's video for 'Darkside', released on 1 August 2018, drew more than eight million views in its first four days.
More about Monument to the Revolution of the people of Moslavina →
13 Thiepval Memorial
Mémorial de Thiepval
France · 26.8 km from Arras50.051° N 2.686° E
Amanda Slater , from Coventry (England) · CC BY-SA 2.0 In the open farmland of Picardy, a great tower of red brick and white stone rises above the fields. The Thiepval Memorial commemorates more than 72,000 British and South African servicemen who died in the Battles of the Somme and have no known grave, and it is the largest Commonwealth memorial to the missing anywhere in the world. Its designer, Sir Edwin Lutyens, gave it a form found nowhere else: not a single arch but a pile of interlocking arches of four different sizes, stepping upward so that from every side the eye is drawn to the tallest opening at the summit.
Did you know? When the remains of a missing soldier are found and identified, his name is filled in with cement, leaving gaps across the panels.
14 Al-Shaheed Monument
Iraq · 5 km from Baghdad33.343° N 44.446° E
Mohmmd Abd · CC0 On the east bank of the Tigris in Baghdad, two halves of a vast turquoise dome stand apart, as if a single shell had been split open from top to bottom. Between them an eternal flame burns beneath a twisted metal flagpole carrying the Iraqi flag. The Al-Shaheed Monument, the Martyr's Memorial, is one of the most recognisable works of modern architecture in the Middle East, its blue tiles shimmering in the sun.
Did you know? The monument was conceived as part of a trio of Baghdad memorials, alongside the Monument to the Unknown Soldier of 1982 and the Victory Arch of 1989.
15 Valley of Heroes, Tjentište (Sutjeska Memorial)
Memorijalni kompleks Tjentište
Bosnia and Herzegovina43.312° N 18.672° E
JankoSam · CC BY-SA 4.0 At the bottom of the Sutjeska valley, surrounded by the forested mountains of eastern Bosnia, two great walls of faceted concrete split apart as though something had burst through them. This is the Valley of Heroes at Tjentište, the memorial to the Battle of the Sutjeska, and it is one of the most powerful sculptures of the Yugoslav memorial movement. The two wings are about 19 metres high and some 25 metres wide, and their surfaces are cut into sharp, crystalline planes that change constantly with the light.
Did you know? A Bosnian Serb army commander reportedly planned to blow up the monument during the 1990s war but did not have enough explosives to do it.
More about Valley of Heroes, Tjentište (Sutjeska Memorial) →
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 is the most striking war memorial in the world?
- On our list, Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Germany) ranks first, followed by Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Japan) and Menin Gate, Ypres (Belgium).
- What are Yugoslav spomeniks?
- Spomenik is the word for monument in the languages of the former Yugoslavia. It is used for the abstract memorials built there from the 1960s to the 1980s to mark Second World War battles and sites of suffering, such as the Stone Flower at Jasenovac and the Sutjeska memorial.
- What happens at the Menin Gate every evening?
- Buglers sound the Last Post under the arch every evening, a ceremony held since 1928 apart from the years of German occupation in the Second World War.
- Which country has the most war memorials?
- In our collection, the most come from France (3), Croatia (2) and Germany (2).
- How many war memorials are on this list in the world?
- The list covers 15 war memorials in 11 countries. France has the most, with 3.