Ever wondered which US landmarks is the key hotspot for tourist photography? Or maybe you’ve been on a recent trip to the States and want to know which of your shots you should share on the gram.

By analyzing hashtag data from 60 of the most well-known landmarks in America, research has revealed which locations have been captured the most by Instagram users – with New York’s Times Square coming out on top.

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Photography and design company Printique(opens in new tab) has crunched the numbers so that you don’t have to. Analysing data on Instagram, such as the number of the same hashtags used per year and average number of hashtags used per day, has enabled Printique to compile a top 10 list of the most Instagrammable landmarks in America.

Unsurprisingly, New York was the most popular location with three of its landmarks situating in the top five. Times Square, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building have an average combined total of 990,194 hashtags used per year!

Times Square alone boasts a massive 410,438 yearly hashtags, averaging 1,124 hashtags every single day. Since the initial launch of Instagram in 2010, #timessquare has been used more than 4.6 million times on the social platform.

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Ranking second place as the most Instagrammed landmark in America was The Grand Canyon in Arizona, with a grand total of 4,072,356 hashtags, and a yearly figure of 358,171 hashtags used. When put into perspective, that’s a heck of a lot of different images captured and uploaded by visitors to the canyon, unlike Times Square that many New Yorker’s undoubtedly pass by every day on the route to work, as well as being a tourist attraction to visitors, of course.

Third place on the list was the beautiful Brooklyn Bridge with 313,836 hashtags on Instagram every year, and a total of 3,568,276 hashtags used. Often used as aa backdrop in countless movies and TV settings, it’s no surprise that this landmark has been uploaded or mentioned on instagram over 3.5 million times.

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The Golden Gate Bridge in California is next, having a total of 3,108,472 hashtags, followed closely behind by New York’s Empire State Building with 3,023,470. Sixth place is granted to one of the world’s most famous landmarks, the Statue of Liberty! A little surprising that this monument isn’t higher up on the list, but figures show that it has a total of 2,130,375 hashtags, less than half of that of Times Square.

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California has another popular landmark that made the list, the Yosemite National Park, with a total number of 1,429,179 hashtags. Another National Park, The Yellowstone in Wyoming, follows in eighth place with 1,085,624 total hashtags, and 95,483 yearly hashtags used. Very closely behind this is Seattle’s famous Space Needle, with 1,069,278 total tags and 94,045 yearly hashtags.

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And  last but not least we have the Hollywood Sign in California, with a total of 782,286 and a yearly average of 68,803. Again, a surprisingly low ranking as this landmark is arguably more famous and one would presume more likely to be photographed than the two national parks or Golden Gate Bridge, with them both residing in California. But alas, the figure’s don’t lie! Or do they?

How reliable this research collected by Printique is cannot be reliably determined, and should therefore be taken with a pinch of salt. While the figures may be entirely accurate at the time of collection, statistics can easily change with new trends, and just because an Instagram hashtag has been used, does not always mean it is applied in the correct context or even in reference to the landmark itself.

A big thanks to Printique for gathering this research, though, which offers some great food for thought when considering our 2022 travel photography plans.

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