Landmarks of Europe

36 to explore

• Watch Landmark Acropolis of Athens The Acropolis is a steep, flat-topped rock in the middle of Athens. Walls have ringed its top for more than 3,300 years. In the 400s BCE, the Athenians built a grand gateway and three temples there, including the Parthenon. Restorers are still repairing them today.
• Watch Landmark Alhambra The Alhambra is a palace and fortress above the city of Granada, in Spain. The Nasrid rulers built most of it between 1238 and 1358. It is famous for its courtyards, fountains, carved plaster and tiles, and the gardens of the Generalife next door.
• Watch Landmark Arc de Triomphe The Arc de Triomphe is a huge stone arch at the top of the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Napoleon ordered it in 1806, but it took 30 years to finish. It is about 50 meters high and 45 meters wide, covered in giant carvings, and under it lies France's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, with a flame that is rekindled every evening.
• Watch Landmark Big Ben Big Ben is the nickname of the Great Bell inside the clock tower of the Houses of Parliament in London. The tower, 96 meters tall, was begun in 1843, and its clock started keeping time in 1859. Since 2012 the tower has been called the Elizabeth Tower.
• Watch Landmark Brandenburg Gate The Brandenburg Gate is a grand sandstone gateway in the center of Berlin, built from 1788 to 1791 with 12 columns and five passages. On top, a statue called the Quadriga shows a chariot pulled by four horses. From 1961 to 1989 the Berlin Wall shut it off, so the gate became a symbol first of a divided Germany and then of its reunification.
• Watch Landmark British Museum The British Museum in London was founded in 1753 and opened in 1759. It holds treasures from all over the world, like the Rosetta Stone, which helped people learn to read Egyptian hieroglyphs. Its grand building with columns was built from 1823 to 1847, and in 2025 it had more than 6.4 million visits.
• Watch Landmark Buckingham Palace Buckingham Palace began as a big house built for the Duke of Buckingham. King George III bought it in 1761, and King George IV had the architect John Nash turn it into a palace. Since 1837 it has been the London home of Britain's kings and queens. It has 775 rooms.
• Watch Landmark Colosseum The Colosseum in Rome is an ancient Roman amphitheater, an oval arena with seats all around. Built between about 70 and 80 CE, it held about 50,000 people, who came to watch shows. Today it is one of Rome's major tourist attractions.
• Watch Landmark Eiffel Tower The Eiffel Tower in Paris was built in just over two years for the 1889 World's Fair. Its 18,038 iron parts are held together by 2.5 million rivets. It was meant to stand for 20 years; today it is 330 meters tall and millions of people visit every year.
• Watch Landmark Hermitage Museum The Hermitage in Saint Petersburg is one of the world's great art museums. Empress Catherine the Great started it in 1764 as her private collection, and it opened to the public in 1852. Today it fills five connected buildings, including the green and white Winter Palace, and holds nearly three million objects, from the Stone Age to today.
• Watch Landmark Leaning Tower of Pisa The Leaning Tower is the bell tower of Pisa's cathedral, in Italy. Building began in 1173, and the tower started to lean while workers were still on its second floor, because soft ground lay under shallow foundations. It is 58.36 meters tall, has seven bells and 273 steps, and engineers made it safe between 1990 and 2001.
• Watch Landmark London Bridge London Bridge crosses the River Thames between the City of London and Southwark. Today's bridge, made of concrete, opened in 1973, but bridges have stood here for almost 2,000 years. The stone bridge before it was sold and rebuilt in Arizona, in the United States!
• Watch Landmark London Eye The London Eye is a huge observation wheel, 135 meters tall, on the South Bank of the River Thames in London. It was built for the year 2000, the new millennium. Its 32 glass capsules carry up to 25 people each, and the wheel turns so slowly that people step on while it moves.
• Watch Landmark Louvre Museum The Louvre in Paris began as a castle in 1190, grew into a royal palace and became a museum in 1793. About 30,000 works of art are on show, including the Mona Lisa. Since 1989, visitors have entered through a glass pyramid; 9 million came in 2025.
• Watch Landmark Milan Cathedral Milan Cathedral, called the Duomo, is a giant Gothic cathedral made of pink-and-white marble. Building began in 1386, and the last details of its front were finished only in 1965. It has more statues than any other building in the world, over 3,000 of them.
• Watch Landmark Mont-Saint-Michel Mont-Saint-Michel is a small rocky island off the coast of Normandy, in France. On top stands a Benedictine abbey built between the 1000s and 1500s, with a village and strong walls below. Around it, some of the biggest tides in Europe rush in and out across a huge sandy bay.
• Watch Landmark Moscow Kremlin The Moscow Kremlin is the oldest part of Moscow. It began as a wooden fort on a hill by the Moskva River. Its present walls and towers were built from 1485 to 1516. Inside stand golden-domed cathedrals, palaces, a tall bell tower and museums.
• Watch Landmark Musée d'Orsay The Musée d'Orsay in Paris was built as a grand train station for the World's Fair of 1900. After the trains stopped, it was turned into a museum, which opened in 1986. Today about 3.7 million people a year come to see its art from 1848 to 1914, including famous Impressionist paintings.
• Watch Landmark Museo del Prado The Museo del Prado in Madrid opened in 1819 to show the paintings collected by Spain's kings and queens. Its stone building was first planned as a science museum. Today it holds about 8,600 paintings, including the world's most complete collections of the Spanish painters El Greco, Velázquez and Goya.
• Watch Landmark Mycenae Mycenae, in southern Greece, was the richest and most important palace city of Bronze Age Greece, more than 3,000 years ago. Its people built huge stone walls, a palace, a gate topped with two carved lions and great round tombs. Archaeologists have found gold masks, cups and jewelry there, and clay tablets with an early form of Greek writing.
• Watch Landmark Neuschwanstein Castle Neuschwanstein Castle stands on a rocky ridge in Bavaria, Germany. King Ludwig II had it built from 1869 as a private retreat in the style of a medieval knights' castle, but with the newest technology inside. It opened to visitors in 1886, and in 2025 about 1.1 million people came.
• Watch Landmark Notre-Dame de Paris Notre-Dame de Paris is the cathedral of Paris, a Catholic church begun in 1163 on an island in the Seine River. Its towers are 68 meters tall. In 2019 a fire destroyed most of its roof and its spire, and after five years of work it reopened in December 2024.
• Watch Landmark Olympia Olympia, in a green valley in southern Greece, was a great religious sanctuary of the ancient Greeks and the home of the ancient Olympic Games. The Games were held there every four years from 776 BCE to 393 CE. Today you can walk among the ruins of its temples, its stadium and its training grounds.
• Watch Landmark Palace of Versailles The Palace of Versailles began as a small royal hunting lodge. King Louis XIV turned it into a vast palace, and from 1682 it was the center of the French government. Today it has 2,300 rooms, the famous Hall of Mirrors and enormous gardens.
• Watch Landmark Pantheon The Pantheon in Rome was rebuilt by the emperor Hadrian almost 1,900 years ago, as a temple of ancient Roman religion. Its concrete dome, about 43 meters across, was the largest ever built until modern times. Since 609 it has been a church, and it still stands almost exactly as it was built.
• Watch Landmark Parthenon The Parthenon is an ancient Greek temple on the Acropolis, a rocky hill in Athens. Built of marble between 447 and 438 BCE, it has 46 outer columns and was decorated with carvings. It has been a temple, a church and a mosque, and today experts are restoring it.
• Watch Landmark Pompeii Pompeii was a Roman town near Naples, in Italy. In 79 CE the volcano Vesuvius erupted and buried it under ash and small stones. Digging began in 1748, and today you can walk its streets, shops, baths and houses. In 2025, 4,000,090 people visited.
• Watch Landmark Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial The Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial stands at the foot of the Guadarrama mountains, northwest of Madrid, Spain. King Philip II began it in 1563, and it was finished in 1584. Inside its granite walls are a monastery, a church, a royal palace, a school and a famous library.
• Watch Landmark Sagrada Família The Sagrada Família is a huge church in Barcelona, Spain, designed by the architect Antoni Gaudí. Building began in 1882 and is still going on. In February 2026 its tallest tower was finished at 172.5 meters, making it the tallest church in the world.
• Watch Landmark St. Basil's Cathedral St. Basil's Cathedral stands at the end of Red Square in Moscow. Tsar Ivan IV ordered it in 1555, and it was finished by 1561. It is really ten small churches in one building, each with its own colorful dome, and today it is a museum.
• Watch Landmark St. Peter's Basilica St. Peter's Basilica, in Vatican City, is the church of the popes and a place of worship for Catholics. Building began in 1506 and took more than a century. Bramante, Michelangelo, Maderno and Bernini all helped design it, and 800 workers raised its great dome in just 22 months.
• Watch Landmark Stonehenge Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain in England. It began as a round earthwork about 5,000 years ago, and its stone circle went up about 2500 BC. Hundreds of people moved huge stones, some from Wales, and lined them up with the sun.
• Watch Landmark Tower Bridge Tower Bridge crosses the River Thames in London, beside the Tower of London. Built from 1886 to 1894, it has two stone-covered towers joined by high walkways, and a road that splits in the middle and swings up like two giant seesaws to let tall ships pass. It still opens about 850 times a year.
• Watch Landmark Tower of London The Tower of London is a castle on the River Thames, begun by William the Conqueror after 1066. Its great stone keep, the White Tower, is more than 900 years old. Over the centuries the Tower has been a royal palace, a fortress, a prison, a zoo, a mint for coins and a store for records, and today it guards the Crown Jewels.
• Watch Landmark Way of Saint James The Way of Saint James, or Camino de Santiago, is a network of old pilgrim routes across Europe that all end at the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. People have walked it for more than 1,000 years, and each year hundreds of thousands still set out on foot, by bicycle or on horseback.
• Watch Landmark Windsor Castle Windsor Castle stands above the River Thames, west of London. William the Conqueror built the first castle here in the 1070s, and kings and queens have lived in it ever since. It is still a working royal home, and visitors can tour its grand rooms and chapel.