How Tall Are the World's Landmarks?

What this landmark heights hub covers

This hub collects sourced heights for 75 famous structures and natural wonders: 20 skyscrapers, 10 towers, 11 statues, 10 monuments, 7 religious buildings, 4 pyramids, 4 bridges, a giant Ferris wheel, and 8 natural landmarks from waterfalls and a redwood tree to Mount Everest. Thirty of the most-searched have their own page with a full article, and all 75 can be dropped into the height comparison tool next to people, characters or each other.

Comparing a building with a person sounds simple, but "how tall is it?" is a surprisingly slippery question. Does the spire count? The antenna? The pedestal under a statue? The snow on a summit? This guide explains how landmark heights are officially measured, why the same structure can have several "correct" heights, which figure this site uses, and how to make sense of comparisons that span a factor of thousands.

How building heights are measured

For buildings, the global authority is the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), whose criteria decide official titles such as "World's Tallest Building." It defines three measurements, all starting from the same point: the finished floor level at the lowest significant, open-air, pedestrian entrance. A sunken plaza or a car-park entrance doesn't count.

1. Height to architectural top includes spires but excludes antennae, signage, flagpoles and other functional-technical equipment. This is the figure used for official rankings.
2. Height to highest occupied floor runs to the finished floor of the highest floor people regularly use.
3. Height to tip runs to the very highest point, whatever it is.

The distinction between a spire and an antenna matters because antennas can be added or removed over time, while a spire is a permanent part of the design. Here's how the three measures compare for some famous towers, according to CTBUH's Skyscraper Center:

The gaps are striking. Willis Tower's antennas add almost 85 m to its tip height, yet it ranks by its 442.1 m roof. The Empire State Building's mast, by contrast, is counted as architecture up to 381 m, with the broadcast antenna above that excluded. One World Trade Center's spire takes it to a symbolic 1,776 ft (541.3 m), a figure chosen to echo the year of the US Declaration of Independence. Burj Khalifa's highest occupied floor is nearly 250 m below its top, because the upper section is a slender spire.

What this site uses. For buildings, the headline height on each page is the architectural height, matching CTBUH rankings. Where a widely quoted alternative exists, such as the tip height of a mast, the page explains it.

Buildings, towers and the 50 percent rule

CTBUH also decides what counts as a building at all. At least 50 percent of a structure's height must be occupiable. Structures that fail that test, such as telecommunications and observation towers, are ranked separately. That's why Tokyo Skytree (634 m) and the CN Tower (553.3 m) are taller than most skyscrapers but aren't "buildings" in the official sense, and why this hub lists them under towers.

CTBUH also gives names to height bands. There is no absolute threshold for "tall," but 14 or more stories, or over 50 m, is a typical guide. A supertall building is 300 m or more, and a megatall is 600 m or more. All 20 skyscrapers in the catalog are supertall, and four are megatall: Burj Khalifa (828 m), Merdeka 118 (678.9 m), Shanghai Tower (632 m) and the Abraj Al-Bait Clock Tower (601 m).

Statues and monuments: what's included?

Statues raise a different question: does the height include the pedestal? The Statue of Liberty is the clearest example, and the US National Park Service publishes several figures:

This site uses the ground-to-torch figure of 92.99 m because that's what you'd see standing in front of it, and notes the statue-only height on its page. The copper figure's head alone, at 5.26 m, is three times the height of an average adult, and its index finger is taller than almost any person.

Other statues follow their own conventions. Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro is listed at 30 m for the statue itself, without its pedestal. The Statue of Unity in Gujarat, India, at 182 m, is the tallest statue in the catalog. At the other end, Michelangelo's David is 5.17 m and Copenhagen's Little Mermaid just 1.25 m, smaller than most visitors.

Churches, bridges and wheels

Religious buildings have their own record books. In this catalog, Barcelona's Sagrada Família is the tallest church at 172.5 m, a height its central Tower of Jesus Christ reached in 2026, overtaking Ulm Minster's 161.53 m steeple, which had long held the title. Cologne Cathedral (157 m) is the tallest of the cathedrals listed. For some churches the choice of measurement matters: St. Peter's Basilica is measured from the floor to the cross on its dome (136.57 m), while Notre-Dame de Paris is listed by its twin west towers (69 m) rather than its spire.

Bridges are usually measured by their towers or masts rather than by the deck. The Millau Viaduct in France has a structural height of 343 m, taller than the Eiffel Tower's tip. The towers of Japan's Akashi Kaikyō Bridge rise 282.8 m above sea level, and the Golden Gate Bridge's towers 227 m above the water. London's Tower Bridge, at 65 m, is smaller than many visitors expect. The London Eye stands 135 m tall on a rim 120 m across.

Natural landmarks and the meaning of elevation

Natural features are measured in yet another way. Mount Everest is listed at 8,848.86 m, the figure from a joint survey by Nepalese and Chinese authorities announced in 2020. That number is an elevation: height above the geoid, a model of mean sea level, not the height you'd climb from the mountain's base. The catalog also includes K2 (8,611 m), Kilimanjaro (5,895 m), Mont Blanc (4,807.3 m), Venezuela's Angel Falls (979 m), El Capitan in Yosemite (914 m), Niagara's Horseshoe Falls (57 m) and Hyperion, the tallest known living tree, at 116.22 m.

When a mountain and a building appear in the same chart, keep in mind they're measured from different baselines. The Burj Khalifa is 828 m above its entrance; Everest is 8,848.86 m above sea level. Comparing the two shows scale, not how much taller one is from its foot.

Heights that change over time

Even well-known landmarks don't have permanent heights.

• Antennas come and go. The Eiffel Tower is a 300 m structure, but antennas at the top bring its tip to 330 m. It was the tallest human-made structure in the world from 1889 until the Chrysler Building was completed in 1930.
• Materials move. The Eiffel Tower's iron expands in the sun, and its top can shift up to 18 cm away from the sun, as well as swaying up to 9 cm in wind.
• Erosion and stone-robbing. The Great Pyramid of Giza was originally 146.6 m tall but stands at 138.5 m today after losing its outer casing.
• Destruction. The original World Trade Center's Twin Towers, 417 m tall, are included as a historical landmark.
• Resurveys. Mountain elevations are revised as survey technology improves; Everest's current figure dates from 2020.

Even databases disagree. Wikidata's own example for its height property lists the Eiffel Tower at 324 m, which doesn't match the 330 m tip height quoted today. This site uses the most recent authoritative value and notes older ones.

Why floor counts are a poor guide to height

It's tempting to estimate a building's height from its number of floors, but floor counts mislead for two reasons. First, floor-to-floor heights vary with use: offices, hotels and apartments are built with different ceiling heights and mechanical floors. Second, many supertall towers end in a tall unoccupied crown or spire.

Divide Burj Khalifa's 828 m top by its 163 floors and you'd get 5.1 m per floor, which is far too much; the real figure, up to the highest occupied floor, is about 3.6 m. The difference is the tower's long spire, almost a third of its total height. As a rough rule, multiply floors by 3.5 to 4 m to estimate where the occupied part of an office tower ends, then expect anything from a few meters to a couple of hundred meters on top.

Common mistakes when comparing landmark heights

1. Mixing tip and architectural heights. Comparing Willis Tower's 527 m antenna tip with Burj Khalifa's 828 m architectural top isn't like for like. Use the same measure for both.
2. Comparing elevation with height. A mountain's elevation is measured from sea level, while a building's height is measured from its entrance. A tall building on high ground isn't "taller" because of the hill.
3. Forgetting the pedestal. Statue heights with and without the base can differ by a factor of two, as with the Statue of Liberty's 46.05 m statue on a 46.94 m pedestal and foundation.
4. Converting carelessly. One meter is 3.2808 feet, so 828 m is 2,717 ft. Rounding to "3 feet per meter" would understate it by more than 200 ft.
5. Using out-of-date figures. Antennas, resurveys and erosion all change heights over time. Check the date of any figure you rely on.

Putting landmarks on a human scale

Huge numbers are hard to picture, so it helps to measure landmarks in people. The table below shows how many 175 cm adults, standing on each other's heads, it would take to reach each height.

The comparison tool does this automatically. Add yourself and a landmark and the chart zooms out, switches its axis to meters or feet, and keeps you visible with a labeled pointer even when you're a fraction of a pixel tall next to a megatall tower. In 3D you can orbit around the scene or look up from your own eye level.

How to use the landmark pages

The hub groups landmarks by category, with the tallest at the top of each list. Every landmark page gives the official height in meters and feet, how it's measured, its location and history, a to-scale chart next to a person, comparisons with similar structures, and visiting information such as observation-deck heights where an official source provides them. For ranked lists across categories, see the tallest lists.