Random Building Generator

Press Generate and the tool shows one famous building: a photo, its name, the city and country it stands in, and the year (or century) it was built. The list holds 99 landmarks spanning more than four thousand years, from the Great Pyramid of Giza (2500 BC) and the Citadel of Aleppo to Neuschwanstein Castle (1886), the Sagrada Familia (begun 1888) and Akshardham Temple in Delhi (2005). There are no filters; each click is a fresh random pick from the whole list.

What is in the list

It is a list of monuments rather than building types. Nearly everything is a castle, palace, fortress, cathedral, church, mosque, temple or ancient ruin, chosen because it is recognizable and photographs well. Roughly by group:

• Castles and forts: Windsor, Conwy, the Tower of London, Himeji and Osaka in Japan, Eltz and Neuschwanstein in Germany, Bran Castle in Romania, Amber Fort and Mehrangarh in India, Hohensalzburg in Austria, Prague Castle, Frederiksborg and Rosenborg in Denmark.
• Palaces: Versailles, Buckingham, Kensington, Hampton Court, Blenheim, Schonbrunn, the Forbidden City, the Winter Palace, Peterhof and Catherine Palace in St Petersburg, Topkapi and Dolmabahce in Istanbul, Potala Palace in Tibet, Mysore Palace, the Grand Palace in Bangkok, Pena Palace in Sintra.
• Cathedrals, churches and mosques: St Peter's, St Paul's, Westminster Abbey, York Minster, Canterbury, the Florence and Milan Duomos, Sainte-Chapelle, Mont Saint-Michel, St Basil's, Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Mezquita of Cordoba, Borgund Stave Church, the rock-cut Church of St George at Lalibela.
• Temples and sacred sites: Angkor Wat, Borobudur, Kailasa Temple at Ellora, the Golden Temple, Shwedagon Pagoda, the temples of Bagan, Kinkaku-ji, the Temple of Heaven, Tiger's Nest in Bhutan, Karnak and Abu Simbel in Egypt, the Monasteries of Meteora.
• Ancient monuments: the Parthenon, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Great Wall, Petra's Treasury, Tikal, Chichen Itza's Temple of Kukulcan, Sigiriya, Qorikancha in Cusco.

Geographically the list leans toward Europe (the UK, Italy, France, Spain and Russia are well represented), with strong showings from India, Egypt, Turkey, China and Japan, and single entries for places like Guatemala, Peru, Bhutan, Ethiopia and Jordan. No skyscrapers, bridges, stadiums or modern office towers are included, and there is no entry from the United States or Australia.

How the date is shown

Each name ends with a date in parentheses: BC dates for ancient sites, AD for everything else. Where a building took generations, the list gives a range (Angkor Wat, AD 900–1300) or a start year with a plus sign (Milan Duomo, AD 1386+). Many of these buildings were rebuilt, extended or restored repeatedly, so the date is a reasonable anchor, not a precise completion year. Hagia Sophia, for instance, is dated to the current structure of 537, not the first church on the site.

Ways to use it

• Sketching practice. Architecture students and urban sketchers roll a building and draw it from the photo. The mix of Gothic, Baroque, Mughal, Khmer and classical forms keeps the exercise varied.
• Geography and history quizzes. Show the photo, hide the name, and have players guess the building, the country or the century. The date makes it easy to score a "closest year" round.
• Travel list roulette. Roll three and pick one to read about tonight, or use it to break a tie on where to go next.
• Reference for writing and games. A castle or temple for a fantasy setting is easier to describe when you have a real one in front of you.

The tool does not name an architectural style, so if you rolled looking for one, work it out from the date and place: European churches from 1150 to 1500 are mostly Gothic, palaces from 1600 to 1750 are Baroque, and anything from Rome before AD 400 is classical. For more history rolls, try the Random Historical Events generator or the Random Trivia Questions Generator; for institutions rather than monuments there is the Random College Generator and the Random Company Generator. Browse all facts & trivia generators for the rest.