Tallest Statues in the World

How statue heights are measured on this list

Comparing statues by height is harder than it looks, because there is no single body that sets the rules the way the CTBUH does for skyscrapers. Some statues are officially measured to the top of the figure, some include a lotus throne or a stone pedestal, and a few are quoted with the whole hill or building they stand on. This list follows each statue's own published figure, which gives the most recognizable numbers but means a few entries include their bases while others don't.

The best-known reference list, Wikipedia's list of tallest statues, tries to deal with this by recording two numbers for each entry: the height of the figure itself and the height of the whole monument including its base. It counts only free-standing sculptures of people or animals, real or mythical, at least 50 m tall, and it measures to the highest point of the figure, leaving out masts or spires that rise above it. Two entries here, the Christ the Redeemer statue and the Great Sphinx, fall below that 50 m cutoff. They are included because they are among the most visited and most photographed statues in the world, and because they make useful reference points at a more human scale.

Statue of Unity: the clear world record

At 182 m, the Statue of Unity is more than 50 m taller than any other statue on Earth. It depicts Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (1875–1950), independent India's first deputy prime minister and home minister, who played a significant part in the political integration of India. It stands on the Narmada River near Kevadia in Gujarat, facing the Sardar Sarovar Dam.

The number is symbolic. The statue's visitor information site says the height was chosen to match the 182 seats of the Gujarat Legislative Assembly. Wikipedia records that the sculptor was Ram V. Sutar, that Larsen & Toubro began construction in October 2013, and that the statue was inaugurated on October 31, 2018, the 143rd anniversary of Patel's birth, at a total cost of ₹27 billion (about US$422 million).

The construction details show how a figure of this size is really a building wearing a sculpture's skin. The outer surface is made of 1,700 tonnes of bronze plates and 1,850 tonnes of bronze cladding, divided into 565 large and 6,000 small panels cast at a foundry in China and assembled near the site. Inside, lifts carry 26 people at a time to a viewing gallery at 153 m in just over 30 seconds. The gallery holds up to 200 visitors and looks out over the dam and the Vindhyachal and Satpura ranges. Stood next to the statue, an adult of average US height (175 cm) would reach about 1/104th of the way up.

The Buddhas: three record holders in fifteen years

Three of the top four statues depict the Buddha, and between them they held the world record from 1993 until 2018.

Ushiku Daibutsu (1993). This bronze Amitabha Buddha in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, was built to commemorate the birth of Shinran, founder of the Jōdo Shinshū school of Buddhism. Its 120 m total includes a 10 m base and a 10 m lotus platform, so the figure itself is about 100 m. Wikipedia describes how the body was built in 20 tiers of roughly 17 blocks each, with bronze sheets about 1.5 by 1.5 m and around 6 mm thick welded onto a steel frame around a central column. An elevator takes visitors to an observation floor at 85 m. It was the world's tallest statue from 1993 to 2008.

Laykyun Sekkya (2008). This standing Gautama Buddha rises near Monywa in Myanmar's Sagaing Region, beside a large reclining Buddha that depicts the Buddha's passing into nirvana. Construction began in 1996 and finished on February 21, 2008. It was the world's tallest statue for only a few months.

Spring Temple Buddha (2008). Completed in September 2008 at Foquan Temple in Lushan County, Henan, this copper statue of Vairocana Buddha took the record from Laykyun Sekkya. Its 128 m includes a 20 m lotus throne. It stands on a 25 m pedestal building, giving 153 m, and after the hill beneath was reshaped into two further pedestals the whole monument is quoted at about 208 m. Wikipedia reports that the statue was planned to use about 1,100 copper castings weighing roughly 1,000 tonnes, and that around US$18 million of the project's US$55 million budget went to the statue itself. It remained the tallest statue until the Statue of Unity opened in 2018.

Why Ushiku and Laykyun Sekkya swap places

On this site, Ushiku Daibutsu ranks third at 120 m and Laykyun Sekkya fourth at 116 m. Compare the figures alone and the order flips: Ushiku's Buddha is about 100 m once its 20 m of platform and base are removed, while Laykyun Sekkya's 116 m is the figure. Wikipedia's article on Laykyun Sekkya calls it the world's third-tallest statue as of May 2026, while the Ushiku Daibutsu article calls Ushiku the fifth-tallest as of 2023. Even the Wikipedia list's own table records Laykyun Sekkya at 129.2 m as a total monument height, including a 13.41 m lotus throne. None of these figures is wrong. They measure different things, and this list keeps each statue's own published figure instead of reworking them into a single basis.

Statue of Liberty: measured with its pedestal

The Statue of Liberty is the one entry where including the base changes the ranking the most. The National Park Service publishes three separate figures:

• Ground to tip of torch: 305 ft 1 in (92.99 m). This is the figure used on this list.
• Top of base to torch: 151 ft 1 in (46.05 m). This is the copper statue itself.
• Heel to top of head: 111 ft 1 in (33.86 m).

The NPS gives the ground-to-pedestal height as 154 ft (46.94 m), so the pedestal and foundation account for about half the familiar height. On the figure alone, Lady Liberty would fall below the Motherland Calls and well below the Asian giants. Her other statistics are a reminder of how thin a sculpture's skin can be. The copper sheeting is only 3/32 of an inch thick, about the thickness of two pennies, and the NPS says the statue can sway up to 3 inches in the wind and the torch up to 6 inches. The current torch, covered in 24-karat gold leaf, replaced the original in 1986. Our Statue of Liberty page compares those figures with other New York landmarks.

The Motherland Calls: tallest statue of the 1960s

The Motherland Calls stands on Mamayev Kurgan in Volgograd, the former Stalingrad, and commemorates those who died in the Battle of Stalingrad. Designed mainly by sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich, the concrete figure of a woman raising a sword was dedicated on October 15, 1967. At 85 m from the base of its pedestal to the tip of the sword, it was the tallest statue in the world when it was finished, and Wikipedia describes it as the tallest statue in Europe when the pedestal is included. It was first planned as a 30 m granite figure, and the monument complex has been on UNESCO's tentative World Heritage list since 2014.

Two famous statues at a smaller scale

Christ the Redeemer is 30 m tall, not counting its 8 m pedestal, and its outstretched arms span 28 m. The reinforced-concrete and soapstone figure weighs 635 metric tons and was built between 1922 and 1931, designed by sculptor Paul Landowski and engineered by Heitor da Silva Costa with Albert Caquot. Its modest official height undersells its presence, because it stands on the 700 m summit of Corcovado above Rio de Janeiro. Wikipedia calls it the largest Art Deco sculpture in the world. See the Christ the Redeemer page for the full set of figures.

The Great Sphinx of Giza is the oldest entry by thousands of years. It was carved from the limestone bedrock of the Giza Plateau, probably during the reign of Khufu or Khafre in Egypt's Old Kingdom, and is the oldest known monumental sculpture in Egypt. It measures about 20 m from its base to the top of its head, 73 m from paw to tail and 19 m across the rear haunches. Unlike every other statue here, its long, low proportions mean it is much longer than it is tall. The Great Sphinx page compares it with the pyramids around it.

How the record has changed hands

Put the entries in date order and you can trace half a century of the "world's tallest statue" title. Each holder below is described as the tallest of its time in the sources cited on this page:

Two patterns stand out. First, the record has moved east, and every holder since 1993 has been in Asia. Second, the leaps have grown: the Statue of Unity beat its predecessor by 54 m, more than the Statue of Liberty's height from base to torch. The materials changed too, from the cast concrete of the Soviet memorial to modular metal skins hung on steel frames. Ushiku and the Statue of Unity were both built as hundreds or thousands of panels, so their size depends on structural engineering as much as on sculpture.

Statues compared with buildings and people

Even the tallest statue is small next to modern skyscrapers. The Statue of Unity's 182 m is about 22% of the Burj Khalifa's 828 m, and every statue on this list would fit beneath the 300 m supertall threshold used for buildings. At the other end of the scale, the heel-to-head height of the Statue of Liberty, 33.86 m, is the height of about 19 adults of 175 cm stacked feet to head.

To see these differences, load any of the statues into the 3D height comparison tool and stand them next to a person, a building or each other. The landmarks hub lists every structure on the site, and the tallest lists hub collects the related rankings for buildings, animals and people.