A rotation angle detecting apparatus 6 comprises a shaft portion space 4 formed in a rotation shaft 1, a bearing holder space 5 formed in a bearing holder 3, a first condenser lens 7 accommodated in the shaft portion space, a second condenser lens 8 provided in the bearing holder space and provided to face the first condenser lens, a detection pattern 11 provided at a focal position of one of the first condenser lens and the second condenser lens, an image sensor 12 provided at a focal position of the other of the first condenser lens and the second condenser lens, and an arithmetic unit 14 for calculating an angle displacement of the rotation shaft based on a signal from the image sensor, wherein the detection pattern has an angle detection pattern 26 in which bar-like line segments extending in a radial direction are arranged at a predetermined angle pitch and a ring-like track is formed by bar-like line segments, and a reference designation pattern 27 for indicating a reference position of the angle detection pattern, and the arithmetic unit carries out a total circumferential scanning on the track with a predetermined radius with a center of the angle detection pattern as the center in regard to a projection image of the detection pattern obtained by the image sensor, extracts a frequency component, carries out a scanning of the reference designation pattern, and calculates the angle displacement of the rotation shaft based on a phase difference of the frequency component and the number of frequencies corresponding to a change in a position of the reference designation pattern.