UNESCO World Heritage Sites
in India: all 45, mapped

India has 45 UNESCO World Heritage Sites as of October 2026: 37 cultural, 7 natural and 1 mixed¹. The first four were inscribed in 1983, six years after India ratified the World Heritage Convention, and India has added at least one site in most years since 2014.

UNESCO World Heritage Sites in India (October 2026)

45

Cultural, natural and mixed sites

37 · 7 · 1

First four: Agra Fort, Ajanta, Ellora, Taj Mahal

1983

Sarnath inscribed, the 45th site

25 Jul 2026

Tap or hover a pin to see the site; the numbered list below the map matches the pins.

India's 45 World Heritage Sites

1Agra Fort1983 · cultural2Ajanta Caves1983 · cultural3Ellora Caves1983 · cultural4Taj Mahal1983 · cultural5Group of Monuments at Mahabalipuram1984 · cultural6Sun Temple, Konark1984 · cultural7Kaziranga National Park1985 · natural8Keoladeo National Park1985 · natural9Manas Wildlife Sanctuary1985 · natural10Churches and Convents of Goa1986 · cultural11Fatehpur Sikri1986 · cultural12Group of Monuments at Hampi1986 · cultural13Khajuraho Group of Monuments1986 · cultural14Elephanta Caves1987 · cultural15Great Living Chola Temples1987 · cultural16Group of Monuments at Pattadakal1987 · cultural17Sundarbans National Park1987 · natural18Nanda Devi and Valley of Flowers1988 · natural19Buddhist Monuments at Sanchi1989 · cultural20Humayun's Tomb, Delhi1993 · cultural21Qutb Minar and its Monuments, Delhi1993 · cultural22Mountain Railways of India1999 · cultural23Mahabodhi Temple Complex, Bodh Gaya2002 · cultural24Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka2003 · cultural25Champaner-Pavagadh Archaeological Park2004 · cultural26Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus2004 · cultural27Red Fort Complex2007 · cultural28The Jantar Mantar, Jaipur2010 · cultural29Western Ghats2012 · natural30Hill Forts of Rajasthan2013 · cultural31Rani-ki-Vav, Patan2014 · cultural32Great Himalayan National Park2014 · natural33Nalanda Mahavihara2016 · cultural34Capitol Complex, Chandigarh (Le Corbusier)2016 · cultural35Khangchendzonga National Park2016 · mixed36Historic City of Ahmadabad2017 · cultural37Victorian Gothic and Art Deco Ensembles of Mumbai2018 · cultural38Jaipur City2019 · cultural39Ramappa Temple, Telangana2021 · cultural40Dholavira: a Harappan City2021 · cultural41Santiniketan2023 · cultural42Sacred Ensembles of the Hoysalas2023 · cultural43Moidams of the Ahom Dynasty, Charaideo2024 · cultural44Maratha Military Landscapes of India2025 · cultural45Ancient Buddhist Site of Sarnath2026 · cultural

Table: All 45 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in India with year of inscription (UNESCO World Heritage List, October 2026)

Five sites trace the Mughal empire's architecture from Humayun to Shah Jahan. Humayun's Tomb in Delhi (1560s), built for the second Mughal emperor, was the first garden tomb on the subcontinent and the direct ancestor of the Taj Mahal: a domed tomb on a raised platform at the centre of a four-part charbagh garden. Fatehpur Sikri, Akbar's red sandstone capital of the 1570s, mixes Persian and Indian forms and was abandoned within about 15 years. Agra Fort and the Red Fort in Delhi were the empire's seats of power, and the Taj Mahal, built between 1631 and 1648 for Mumtaz Mahal, is its masterpiece⁵.

India's three great cave sites in Maharashtra were cut into rock from the top down. Ajanta's 30 or so Buddhist caves, from about the 2nd century BCE to the 5th century CE, hold some of the finest surviving ancient Indian painting. At Ellora, 34 Buddhist, Hindu and Jain caves from about the 6th to 10th centuries sit side by side; its Kailasa temple (Cave 16) is a complete multi-storey temple carved out of a single basalt cliff by removing, by most estimates, around 200,000 tonnes of rock. Elephanta, on an island in Mumbai harbour, is famous for its three-headed Shiva.

Ten sites are temple architecture, and together they cover every major regional style (our guide to Indian temple architecture explains how to read them). Mahabalipuram (7th–8th century) shows early Pallava rock-cut and structural temples. Pattadakal (7th–8th century) places northern- and southern-style temples side by side. Khajuraho (c. 950–1050) has the soaring Nagara towers of the Chandela kings. The Great Living Chola Temples, led by the Brihadisvara at Thanjavur (completed 1010), are still in worship. Konark (13th century) is a temple built as the chariot of the sun god, with 24 carved stone wheels. Hampi was the capital of the Vijayanagara empire, and Ramappa (13th century) is known for its lightweight "floating" bricks. The Hoysala temples of Belur, Halebidu and Somanathapura (12th–13th century) are carved in soft soapstone in extraordinary detail.

Four sites mark the places most important to Buddhism. Sanchi has the oldest stone structure in India, the Great Stupa, begun under the emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE, with carved gateways added later. Bodh Gaya's Mahabodhi Temple stands where the Buddha is believed to have attained enlightenment. Nalanda was a great monastic university from the 5th to the 12th century. Sarnath, inscribed in July 2026, is where the Buddha is believed to have given his first sermon; the serial site includes the Chaukhandi Stupa and the archaeological remains around the Dhamek Stupa¹.

The Qutb Minar in Delhi, begun around 1199, is a 72.5-metre fluted victory tower of red sandstone and marble. The Hill Forts of Rajasthan (including Chittorgarh and Kumbhalgarh) use mountains as walls. In 2025 UNESCO added the Maratha Military Landscapes of India: 12 forts built or adapted between the late 17th and early 19th centuries, 11 in Maharashtra and Gingee in Tamil Nadu, from hilltop Raigad to the sea fort of Sindhudurg³⁴.

Cities are listed too: Ahmadabad (2017) for its walled old city and pol neighbourhoods, Jaipur (2019) for its planned 18th-century grid, Mumbai's Victorian Gothic and Art Deco ensembles (2018) facing each other across the Oval Maidan, and Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (2004), the Gothic Revival railway station completed in 1888. Le Corbusier's Capitol Complex in Chandigarh is part of a transnational listing of his work, and Santiniketan (2023) is Rabindranath Tagore's university town.

Some of India's most surprising sites are about engineering. Dholavira in Gujarat's Rann of Kutch is a Harappan city whose builders, some 4,500 years ago, cut reservoirs into rock and channelled seasonal streams to survive in a desert. Rani-ki-Vav at Patan (11th century) is a stepwell seven storeys deep, lined with hundreds of sculptures, a water source designed as a temple. The Jantar Mantar in Jaipur (1720s–1730s) is a set of masonry astronomical instruments, including the world's largest stone sundial. The Mountain Railways of India (Darjeeling, Nilgiri and Kalka–Shimla) solved steep climbs with loops, zigzags and rack rails. Bhimbetka's rock shelters hold paintings thousands of years old, and the Moidams of Assam (2024) are the earthen burial mounds of the Ahom kings.

India's seven natural sites protect very different landscapes. Kaziranga in Assam holds the world's largest population of the greater one-horned rhinoceros. Keoladeo in Rajasthan is a man-made wetland that hosts migratory birds. Manas lies in the foothills on the Bhutan border. The Sundarbans are the largest mangrove forest in the world, shared with Bangladesh and home to the Bengal tiger. Nanda Devi and the Valley of Flowers in Uttarakhand combine a high mountain sanctuary with alpine meadows; the Western Ghats, older than the Himalayas, are a global biodiversity hotspot; and the Great Himalayan National Park protects high-altitude forest in Himachal Pradesh. Khangchendzonga in Sikkim, India's only mixed site, combines the world's third-highest mountain with sacred landscapes of Buddhist and indigenous traditions.

1. Tentative List — the country lists sites it intends to nominate; India's list has dozens of candidates.
2. Nomination dossier — a detailed file on the site's boundaries, history, condition and management plan.
3. Expert evaluation — ICOMOS reviews cultural sites and IUCN natural ones, often with a field visit.
4. Outstanding universal value — the site must meet at least one of ten criteria and show integrity and protection.
5. Committee decision — the 21-member World Heritage Committee inscribes, refers back or defers at its annual session.

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The list, dates and categories come from UNESCO's World Heritage List and UNESCO's July 2026 announcement for Sarnath; the 2025 Maratha listing from the United Nations in India and contemporary reporting. Map pins are placed at each site's main location by latitude and longitude; serial sites such as the Western Ghats or the Maratha forts are shown by one representative point, and no political borders are drawn. Photographs are from Wikimedia Commons, credited under each. Last reviewed October 2026.