Whether they are iconic monuments like the Eiffel Tower or the tallest skyscraper ever built, major landmarks like Renzo Piano's The Shard in London or ancient cathedrals, some buildings are truly known around the world. Unsurprisingly, the popularity of certain architectures spills over into our 'digital lives', particularly on Instagram, where people share - and flaunt - pictures of their travels, using the most unexpected hashtags such as #burjkhalifa124thfloor. This is contemporary storytelling, turning architecture into a global cultural phenomenon.

But determining which buildings are most mentioned, tagged or simply appearing on Instagram is a virtually impossible task. In 2022, for example, Musement, the digital platform for booking tourist activities, attempted to rank the most popular skyscrapers on the social network by analysing the most used hashtags for each building.
 

Beyond geotags and mentions, specific analysis and quantitative data, one particularly interesting aspect is that many places of architectural value have official accounts with a significant following. These are often buildings that are famous for their history, such as the endless construction site of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona with its inimitable forms, or the American dream of the Empire State Building in New York.

Museums are deliberately absent from this list of the most popular architectures: although they are often housed in extraordinary buildings, their digital popularity may be 'spoilt' by their role as cultural institutions, containers for exhibitions and events. Just look at the numbers: in Paris, the Louvre has 5.1 million followers, while in New York the Guggenheim has 2.8 million and the Met 4.4 million, on a par with the Tate in London.

Moving away from these giants of culture and entertainment, which often have a digital palimpsest and are mass content creators, we report on a selection of buildings with a particular following on Instagram, including architecture that seems to be there by birthright and unexpected places. 

Note: The number of followers of the official pages was viewed on 27 January 2025.