AmorEterna's definitive ranking: the greatest love stories in history, ordered by cultural impact — how many centuries they've been retold, how much art they generated and how many places you can still visit today.
AmorEterna's definitive ranking: the greatest love stories in history, ordered by cultural impact — how many centuries they've been retold, how much art they generated and how many places you can still visit today.
1
Eternal love carved in marble
The Mughal emperor who, when his favorite wife died bearing their fourteenth child, built the Taj Mahal as her tomb and the grandest declaration of eternal love ever raised.
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2
Love, empire and a double suicide
The queen of Egypt and the Roman general whose romance fused love with imperial politics and ended in a double suicide that sealed the end of an era.
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3
The universal archetype of forbidden love
The teenage lovers of two feuding families whose deaths became the universal archetype of forbidden love.
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4
The poet driven mad by love
The poet driven mad with love for Layla, married off to another by force; his longing became a Sufi allegory of the soul seeking God.
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5
He went down to the underworld for love
The musician who descended to the underworld to retrieve his love and lost her by looking back one moment too soon.
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6
The elephant and the dove
The two great artists of post-revolutionary Mexico, bound by art and politics and divided by infidelity, who loved and wounded each other until Frida's death.
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7
The Liberator of the Liberator
The Quito-born revolutionary who left her husband to fight and love alongside the Liberator, saved his life in 1828, and earned the title "Liberator of the Liberator."
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8
A hundred sonnets for a secret lover
The secret lover who became wife, nurse and guardian of the Nobel laureate's legacy, and the muse of "100 Love Sonnets" and "The Captain's Verses."
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9
The queen crowned after death
The lover murdered on the orders of the king's father, whom Pedro — once king — by legend exhumed and crowned queen after death.
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10
The warrior who became a volcano
The warrior sent to war who receives a false report of his death; the princess dies of grief and he watches over her body forever. The two become Mexico's twin volcanoes.
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11
Fifty-one years, nine months and four days
Florentino's wait for Fermina is fixed by the novel itself: fifty-one years, nine months and four days, until he declares his love again at her husband's funeral.
Read the storyThe most famous love letters of the Middle Ages
The philosopher-teacher Abelard and his brilliant student Heloise; their love produced a son and a secret marriage that ended in castration and religious life — and in some of history's most celebrated love letters.
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13
The most successful telenovela in history
The "ugly," brilliant secretary Beatriz Pinzón and her boss Armando Mendoza: the love story that defies appearances and that the whole world adopted.
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14
The love that defeats pride
The couple from "Pride and Prejudice" who learn to love by overcoming his pride and her prejudice: the most perfect happy ending in literature.
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14
Amor prohibido, the Tejano anthem
The Queen of Tejano and her band's guitarist defied her father Abraham's disapproval and eloped on April 2, 1992; she was murdered on March 31, 1995, at 23.
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15
The greatest love letter ever written
They met backstage at the Grand Ole Opry in 1956; he proposed onstage in 1968 before 7,000 people. She helped him beat his addiction.
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16
He gave up a throne for love
King Edward VIII signed the abdication on December 10, 1936 to marry the twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson, declaring he could not reign "without the help and support of the woman I love."
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17
Don't cry for her, Argentina
The colonel and the radio actress who became Argentina's most powerful political couple; Evita championed the descamisados and women's suffrage, and died of cancer at 33.
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18
A bridge of magpies once a year
The mortal cowherd (star Altair) and the heavenly weaver girl (star Vega), separated by the Milky Way and reunited once a year, on the 7th day of the 7th lunar month, by a bridge of magpies.
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19
The Inca love with a happy ending
The common-born general Ollantay loves Cusi Coyllur ("Joyful Star"), daughter of emperor Pachacútec; rebuffed for not being royal, he rebels for a decade while she is imprisoned, until the new emperor pardons and reunites them.
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20
The burning letters of an emperor
Napoleon's passionate, jealous letters to Joséphine de Beauharnais; he divorced her for lack of an heir, but by tradition her name was on his lips at death.
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21
The love the letters revealed
The Nobel laureate — the first Latin American woman to win it — and her American companion and translator; their love was revealed by the letters published as "Niña errante" (2010), shattering the myth of the lonely "Saint Gabriela."
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22
An obsessive love on the moors
The obsessive, destructive love of "Wuthering Heights": "I am Heathcliff," says Catherine, in one of literature's fiercest declarations.
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23
An impossible love between geniuses
Lorca fell in love with Dalí at Madrid's Residencia de Estudiantes; the painter did not reciprocate physically, but the bond was intense and inspired the "Ode to Salvador Dalí" (1926).
Read the storyTopping the list is Shah Jahan & Mumtaz Mahal: The Mughal emperor who, when his favorite wife died bearing their fourteenth child, built the Taj Mahal as her tomb and the grandest declaration of eternal love ever raised.