The 11 Most Beautiful Cathedrals in The World

The Gothic cathedral on the Ile de la Cite, reopened in December 2024 after the 2019 fire with its limestone scrubbed back to a pale gold nobody alive had seen before.

Flying buttresses, gargoyles and both rose windows survived; the spire has been rebuilt to Viollet-le-Duc's design.

Entry to the nave is still free.

Brunelleschi's magnificent dome crowns Florence's skyline and remains the largest brick dome ever constructed.

Built between 1296 and 1436, the Duomo's terracotta-tiled dome and its ornate campanile have defined the city's silhouette for nearly 600 years.

The cathedral of Venice, a Byzantine pile of domes, marble columns and eight thousand square metres of gold mosaic gathered and looted over eight centuries.

The four bronze horses on the loggia were taken from Constantinople in 1204.

The Pala d Oro behind the altar is set with almost two thousand gemstones.

A blackened Gothic giant beside the Rhine, begun in 1248 and not finished until 1880, with twin spires that made it briefly the tallest building in the world.

It survived the bombing that flattened the city around it.

The 533 steps up the south tower end in a view over the river and the railway station below.

The iconic multicoloured onion domes of St Basil's Cathedral have made it one of the most recognisable buildings in the world.

Built by Ivan the Terrible between 1555 and 1561, the cathedral sits at the southern end of Red Square and is now a museum.

Wren's domed cathedral, built after the Great Fire and the defining image of London's survival through the Blitz.

Inside, the Whispering Gallery carries a murmur clean around the dome; above it, 528 steps lead to the Golden Gallery and a view straight down Fleet Street and across the Thames.

The largest Gothic cathedral in the world, raised on the site of Seville's main mosque after the Reconquest and keeping its minaret as the Giralda bell tower.

Columbus's tomb is carried by four figures representing the kingdoms of Spain.

The tower is climbed by 35 ramps rather than stairs, built wide enough to ride a horse up.

The Gothic cathedral inside Prague Castle, holding the Bohemian crown jewels and the tomb of Saint Wenceslas.

Mucha's Art Nouveau window in the north nave throws colour across the stone on bright mornings.

The south tower's 287 steps give the best view over the red roofs of Mala Strana.

St Barbara's Church rises over Kutná Hora, a UNESCO-listed medieval silver-mining town an hour from Prague.

Building began in 1388 and dragged on for five centuries, leaving a soaring Gothic nave ringed by flying buttresses and gargoyles, with faded frescoes of miners and moneyers inside.

It shares the skyline with Baroque terraces and the Jesuit College, making the old town worth a half-day wander.

Oscar Niemeyer's hyperboloid of sixteen concrete columns, opened in 1970, that reads from outside as a crown and from inside as a sky of blue and green glass.

Visitors descend a dark ramp and emerge under the light, a sequence Niemeyer designed deliberately.

Three bronze angels hang suspended from the roof above the nave.

The Duomo di Milano is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world and took nearly six centuries to complete.

Its rooftop terrace, accessible by lift or stairs, offers a unique up-close view of its 3,400 statues and 135 spires against the Milan skyline.