The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests in Brazil
5 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful gardens, parks and forests in Brazil are Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden, Amazon rainforest and Aparados da Serra National Park. The list covers 5 gardens, parks and forests. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Brazil is among the most biodiverse countries on Earth, holding much of the Amazon and the remains of the Atlantic Forest, one of the richest forest systems anywhere. That abundance of tropical plants also shaped a native school of landscape design: Brazilian gardeners learned to work with palms, bromeliads and philodendrons rather than imported European flora.
The Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden was founded in 1808 by the Portuguese prince regent, later King João VI, and is known for its long avenue of imperial palms beneath Corcovado. Aparados da Serra National Park protects Itaimbezinho, a canyon whose sheer basalt walls drop into forest at the edge of the southern highlands. Near Natal, the Cashew Tree of Pirangi is a single tree whose branches root wherever they touch the ground, so that it spreads like a small grove. The Sítio Roberto Burle Marx, the landscape architect's former home west of Rio, gathers thousands of tropical species and is listed by UNESCO as a living laboratory of modern garden design.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden | Botanical garden | |
| 2 | Amazon rainforest | Forest | |
| 3 | Aparados da Serra National Park | National park | |
| 4 | Cashew Tree of Pirangi | Remarkable tree | |
| 5 | Sítio Roberto Burle Marx | Historic garden |
01 Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden
Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro
Brazil · 6.8 km from Rio de Janeiro22.968° S 43.224° W
Image by anapaulafelic from Pixabay Its signature is the Avenue of Royal Palms, a straight ride some 750 metres long lined with more than a hundred and thirty Roystonea oleracea, their smooth grey trunks rising like columns towards feathery crowns far overhead. All of them descend from a single tree, the Palma Mater, which João himself planted in 1809; it grew to almost 39 metres before lightning struck it in 1972.
Did you know? Its botanical library, with more than 32,000 volumes, is the largest specialised collection on plants in Brazil.
02 Amazon rainforest
Floresta amazônica
Brazil · 7.5 km from Manaus3.160° S 60.030° W
Lula Oficial · CC BY-SA 4.0 The forest around that confluence is not simply large; it's disproportionately full.
Did you know? A 2001 study counted more than 1,100 tree species in just a quarter of a square kilometre of Ecuadorian rainforest.
03 Aparados da Serra National Park
Parque Nacional de Aparados da Serra
Brazil29.192° S 50.098° W
Image by InaeMiranda from Pixabay 8 km long, up to 600 m wide and as much as 720 m deep, with walls that drop almost vertically. They are built of stacked basalt flows — part of the Serra Geral volcanic formation of the Paraná–Etendeka igneous province, with layers of Botucatu sandstone between them — and the successive flows show as horizontal bands in the cliffs. Two waterfalls pour over the rim, the Véu de Noiva (Bride's Veil) and the Cachoeira das Andorinhas.
Did you know? The lava flows belong to the Serra Geral Group, which geologists split into four formations: Torres, Vale do Sol, Palmas and Esmeralda.
04 Cashew Tree of Pirangi
Brazil · 25 km from Natal5.974° S 35.129° W
Jorge Savignon Jorrin · CC BY-SA 4.0 The explanation lies in an unusual way of growing. Instead of rising upright, the branches spread sideways, sag under their own weight until they touch the sandy ground, and then put down roots, sending up new stems that grow on in their turn. Of the five main limbs that leave the original trunk, four have behaved this way, so that it is now hard to say where the first trunk ends and the later growth begins.
Did you know? A single season's crop of around 70,000 to 80,000 cashew fruits weighs roughly two and a half tonnes.
05 Sítio Roberto Burle Marx
Brazil · 31.5 km from Nova Iguaçu23.024° S 43.545° W
Halley Pacheco de Oliveira · CC BY-SA 3.0 Burle Marx and his brother Siegfried bought the estate, then called Sítio Santo Antônio da Bica, in 1949. It began as a nursery for the plants he was gathering on expeditions into the Brazilian forest with botanists and architects, a practice of studying species in their own habitat that he learned from the botanist Henrique Lahmeyer de Mello Barreto.
Did you know? The site includes about 12,000 square metres of plant nurseries and a library of roughly 4,000 titles.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful gardens, parks and forests in Brazil?
- On our list, Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden ranks first, followed by Amazon rainforest and Aparados da Serra National Park.
- Why is the Cashew Tree of Pirangi so large?
- A genetic peculiarity makes its branches grow sideways and put down roots where they touch the soil, so the tree keeps expanding outward. It is often described as the largest cashew tree in the world.
- Who was Roberto Burle Marx?
- Burle Marx was a Brazilian landscape architect of the 20th century, known for modernist gardens made with native tropical plants, including the Copacabana promenade in Rio. His estate became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021.
- How many gardens, parks and forests are on this list in Brazil?
- The list covers 5 gardens, parks and forests.