Before the 13th century , Guatemala, a tall temple built in 300 BC. ,
Tamilnadu at at Early tall buildings were similar to the record-setting Egyptian pyramid structures. In 1400 BC the
ziggurat of
Dur-Kurigalzu was constructed in
Mesopotamia, and in 601 BC the
Etemenanki ziggurat of
Babylon () followed. The
La Danta of
El Mirador (
Guatemala) and the
Amaravati Stupa of
Amaravati (
India) were constructed in around 300 BC. The
Lighthouse of Alexandria in
Egypt had a height of between and existed between the 3rd century BC and 14th century AD. The
Pantheon in Rome, finished in the early 2nd century AD, has an
ancient Roman height record from floor to top of , which exactly corresponds to the diameter of its interior space and was only slightly surpassed by the
Pont du Gard structure. The
Hagia Sophia, built in AD 537 in
Constantinople, reaches a height of . The ancient
Kushan stupa of Kanishka, located in the present-day
Pakistan, near
Peshawar, completed around AD 200, had a height of between . The Chinese explorer
Xuanzhang described it as the tallest building in the world in his book
Records of the western Region. The
Sri Lankan
Jetavanaramaya stupa, constructed in the 3rd century, measured from its construction until the 11th century. Its current height is . Another short-lived structure was the 6th-century wooden
Yongning Pagoda with a height of about to in
Luoyang, China.
Hwangnyongsa, or Hwangnyong Temple, and sometimes spelled Hwangryongsa, is a former
Buddhist temple in the city of
Gyeongju, South Korea. Completed in the 7th century, the enormous nine-storey structure was built entirely of interlocking timbers with no iron nails. It had a standing total height of , making it the tallest structure in East Asia and the
tallest wooden structure in the world at the time of its construction. It was destroyed by invading Mongol forces in 1238. In the 8th century, two seven-storied pagodas with a height of were constructed at
Todaiｰji (東大寺) in
Nara,
Japan. They were one of the tallest wooden buildings in the world at the time. By the 14th century, both were burned down by fires caused by war or lightning strikes. In 1057, the wooden
Shwesandaw Pagoda of
Bagan,
Myanmar, was constructed. The Vimana of the
Brihadisvara Temple, Thanjavur,
Tamil Nadu, completed in 1010 is tall, slightly taller and older than
Angkor Wat,
Cambodia. The entire complex is built of
granite. The
minaret of
Koutoubia Mosque in
Marrakesh,
Morocco, includes a spire and orbs. It was completed under the reign of the Berber
Almohad Caliph Yaqub al-Mansur around 1195. The minaret of Isa in the
Umayyad Mosque was most likely originally built in the 9th century and also had a height of 77 m (253 ft). The eastern spires of the Romanesque
Speyer Cathedral, completed in 1106, reach a height of . The still-standing
Torre Asinelli, completed some time before 1185, was originally tall, later raised to .
Malmesbury Abbey was built in 1180 and reached a height of .
Churches and cathedrals: tallest buildings between the 13th and 20th centuries The world's tallest
structures were churches or cathedrals from the 13th/14th century until 1884, and
buildings until the beginning of the 20th century. The
Old St Paul's Cathedral () in London and
Lincoln Cathedral () both surpassed not only any older tallest building, but also the tallest structures until then, the Pyramids. They were constructed from the 12th century, reaching completion and their maximum height in the 1310s (1314 and 1311 respectively). Lincoln Cathedral's spire collapsed in 1549, and its previous height was not surpassed elsewhere for a long time.
St. Mary's Church in
Stralsund became the world's tallest building after the collapse of the Lincoln spire. The central tower of
St. Pierre's Cathedral in Beauvais was tallest from 1569 until it collapsed in 1573, making St. Mary's the tallest once again. In 1647, the bell tower of St. Mary's burned down, making the shorter
Strasbourg Cathedral the world's tallest building. It was not until the completion of the
Ulm Minster in 1890 that the world's tallest building was again also the tallest building ever constructed, surpassing the original configuration of Lincoln Cathedral. The height of Lincoln Cathedral is disputed by some, but accepted by most sources. The completion date for the spire is given as 1311 rather than 1300 by some sources. Also the height of the spire of
Old St Paul's Cathedral, destroyed by lightning in 1561, is disputed, for example by
Christopher Wren (1632–1723), who suggested a height of .
Turn of the century In 1890,
Ulm Minster became the tallest church ever built, but it was the last church to claim the position of tallest building, which eventually went to the
Philadelphia City Hall in 1894, the first skyscraper taller than (or, depending on definition, the
Mole Antonelliana in 1889). Among all structures, in 1884 the
Washington Monument had already overtaken the long-standing record held by churches. But five years later in 1889 it was significantly surpassed by the
Eiffel Tower, which reached completely new heights at (its antennas were added after 1957), leaving heights of skyscrapers behind and opening up the
supertall era, whose heights were only reached by the pinnacle of the
Chrysler Building () in 1930 and fully overtaken by the
Empire State Building in 1931. ==Tallest structures since the 20th century==