The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests in Europe

78 places in 19 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Park Güell

   Spain · 4 km from Barcelona41.414° N 2.153° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The one house that did sell went to Gaudí himself, who lived there with his father and niece for close to twenty years — meaning the architect spent much of his later career living inside his own unsold real estate project.

   Did you know? The mushroom-like dome of the entrance lodge is ribbed with upturned coffee cups, and neither gatehouse contains a single right angle.

   More about Park Güell →

2. 02 Bardenas Reales

   Spain42.190° N 1.500° W

   

   The most spectacular part is the Bardena Blanca in the centre, named for the pale, salt-crusted gypsum soils. Here the erosion is most intense, and hard caps of sandstone protect softer clay beneath, leaving isolated pillars. The best known is Castildetierra, a slender chimney of clay under a sandstone lid that has become the emblem of the region and the textbook example of how the badlands form.

   Did you know? Beneath the gullies lie roughly four kilometres of sediment laid down in the closed Ebro basin, which only broke through to the Mediterranean about ten million years ago.

   More about Bardenas Reales →

3. 03 Boboli Gardens

   Giardino di Boboli

   Italy · 1.6 km from Florence43.765° N 11.250° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The main axis climbs straight up from the palace. First comes the amphitheatre, dug into the slope and later lined with stone, with an ancient Egyptian obelisk brought from the Medici villa in Rome at its centre. Above it a double ramp leads to the Fountain of Neptune, made by Stoldo Lorenzi in the 1560s; its basin once doubled as the reservoir for the aqueduct that carried spring water down to the city.

   Did you know? Expanded in the 17th century, the gardens cover about 45,000 square metres of hillside.

   More about Boboli Gardens →

4. 04 Plitvice Lakes National Park

   Nacionalni park Plitvička jezera

   Croatia44.880° N 15.616° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage
   • UNESCO natural beauty

   

   That means the landscape people photograph is never finished; it's mid-construction, permanently. The famous shifts in the water's colour — turquoise, green, grey, depending on mineral content, sunlight angle and the season — come from exactly the same chemistry that's building the barriers, which is part of why the colour looks different every time someone visits rather than being some kind of seasonal trick.

   Did you know? The upper lakes lie on dolomite bedrock, while the lower lakes sit in a limestone canyon.

   More about Plitvice Lakes National Park →

5. 05 Generalife

   Spain · 1.3 km from Granada37.177° N 3.585° W

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The heart of the palace is the Patio de la Acequia, a long, narrow courtyard with a water channel running down its middle between flowerbeds, framed at each end by arcaded pavilions. The effect of water, shade and enclosed greenery is exactly what the place was built for. In the northern pavilion a small mirador, added in 1319, looks back across the valley to the towers of the Alhambra.

   Did you know? The garden paths are paved in pebble mosaics, using white stones from the Darro and black ones from the Genil.

   More about Generalife →

6. 06 Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park

   Parque natural del Cabo de Gata-Níjar

   Spain · 36.5 km from Almería36.900° N 2.030° W

   • UNESCO Global Geopark
   • biosphere reserve

   

   The Sierra del Cabo de Gata is volcanic, and the park is essentially an old volcanic field worn down by sea and wind: lava flows, domes and the hollows of calderas, with cliffs up to about 100 metres dropping into the water. That geology earned it a place in UNESCO's Global Geoparks Network in 2006; it has also been a Biosphere Reserve since 1997.

   More about Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park →

7. 07 L'Oceanogràfic

   Oceanográfico

   Spain · 6 km from Valencia39.453° N 0.348° W

   

   Opened in February 2003, the Oceanogràfic is the marine end of Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences, the chain of white buildings laid out along the old bed of the Turia river.

   Did you know? Building it took about 150,000 cubic metres of concrete, 15,000 tonnes of steel and acrylic viewing panels up to 33 centimetres thick.

   More about L'Oceanogràfic →

8. 08 El Torcal de Antequera

   Torcal de Antequera

   Spain · 29.2 km from Málaga36.964° N 4.546° W

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The stone is Jurassic limestone laid down about 150 million years ago on the floor of a sea channel that once linked the Atlantic and the Mediterranean between Cádiz and Alicante. Uplifted to over 1,300 metres, the beds stayed almost horizontal, which is unusual in Andalusia.

   Did you know? El Tornillo, the screw-shaped stack of limestone, is used as the emblem of the protected area.

   More about El Torcal de Antequera →

9. 09 Tuileries Garden

   Jardin des Tuileries

   France · 2.1 km from Paris48.864° N 2.326° E

   

   The garden you walk through today is essentially André Le Nôtre's. In 1664 Colbert asked the future designer of Versailles, whose grandfather and father had both been gardeners here, to redesign it, and he imposed the French formal style: a terrace looking down on parterres, a long central alley, two basins, and at the western end two horseshoe ramps rising to terraces around the great Octagonal Basin.

   More about Tuileries Garden →

10. 10 Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe

    Germany · 7.2 km from Kassel51.317° N 9.400° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The park was the work of several generations of the landgraves of Hesse-Kassel. Landgrave Charles commissioned the Italian architect Giovanni Francesco Guerniero, who began the Hercules and the cascades in 1701.

    Did you know? The water features were already being demonstrated in 1714, three years before the Hercules figure was set on top of the monument.

    More about Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe →

11. 11 Adršpach-Teplice Rocks

    Czech Republic50.611° N 16.115° E

    

    In the Adršpach rocks the paths run through narrow clefts between pillars, past a waterfall and two small lakes. The formations have names that go back centuries: the Mayor and his Wife, the Lovers, the Sugar Loaf, Rübezahl's Organ. The Teplice rocks are more austere, with sheer walls along the Skalní potok stream, the ridge of the Čáp at 786 metres, and a rocky maze of plateaus and passages.

    Did you know? Czech law bans climbing in national nature reserves, so since 1992 the national mountaineering federation has had to negotiate a special exemption for these rocks.

    More about Adršpach-Teplice Rocks →

12. 12 Maspalomas Dunes

    Dunas de Maspalomas

    Spain27.743° N 15.583° W

    

    The reserve is more than sand. On its western edge lies La Charca, a brackish coastal lagoon where stilts, little ringed plovers, coots and moorhens nest and migrants such as little egrets, grey herons, whimbrels and even flamingos stop on their way between Europe and Africa. Beside it grows a palm grove of native Canary Island palms, where the Gran Canaria giant lizard is common.

    Did you know? Beach kiosks along Playa del Inglés once blocked the wind that carries sand inland, and their number has been cut back since 1995 to help the dunes.

    More about Maspalomas Dunes →

13. 13 Jardin du Luxembourg

    France · 1.7 km from Paris48.847° N 2.337° E

    

    Its centre is a formal French composition: terraces, gravel walks and flower beds around the octagonal Grand Bassin, where model sailboats are still sailed. Around the terraces stand twenty statues of queens of France and illustrious women, commissioned under Louis Philippe in 1848, and more than a hundred statues, monuments and fountains in all. Among them is an original small version of the Statue of Liberty by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi.

    Did you know? The garden's orangery shelters about 180 plants in tubs, some of them estimated to be 250 to 300 years old.

    More about Jardin du Luxembourg →

14. 14 Parc des Buttes-Chaumont

    France · 3.3 km from Paris48.880° N 2.383° E

    

    Under Napoleon III and Haussmann this wasteland became the showpiece of the new Paris. Adolphe Alphand planned the park, Gabriel Davioud designed its buildings and Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps the planting; two years went on earthworks alone, and the park opened on 1 April 1867, in time for the Universal Exposition.

    Did you know? The suspension bridge to the island is 63 metres long but hangs only about eight metres above the lake, unlike the far loftier masonry bridge.

    More about Parc des Buttes-Chaumont →

15. 15 St Kilda

    United Kingdom57.815° N 8.588° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage
    • UNESCO natural beauty

    

    People lived here for at least two thousand years, and probably far longer: pottery found in 2015 points to Neolithic settlers. The islanders lived on seabirds, taken by men who climbed the cliffs and stacks, on a few sheep and cattle, and on barley and potatoes grown in Village Bay. Adult men met each morning in the street to decide the day's work, a gathering outsiders called the St Kilda parliament.

    Did you know? In the 21 years before 1876 only 15 of 56 babies born on the islands survived, most of the others killed by neonatal tetanus.

    More about St Kilda →

16. 16 Icod Dragon Tree

    Spain28.367° N 16.722° W

    

    The "thousand years" should be taken loosely. Dragon trees have no annual rings, and estimates of this tree's age have ranged absurdly, from a 1907 Swiss study that proposed 2,500 years to a 1975 assessment that allowed only about 350. More recent thinking puts it somewhere around 800 to 1,000 years, which would still make it a venerable tree by any standard.

    Did you know? In 1993 the road that ran past the tree was moved away to protect it, and the garden around it opened in 1996.

    More about Icod Dragon Tree →

17. 17 Sil Canyon

    Cañón del Sil

    Spain · 38.2 km from Ourense42.401° N 7.416° W

    

    The gorge marks the natural boundary between the provinces of Ourense and Lugo, and its protected area takes in parts of the municipalities of Nogueira de Ramuín, Pantón, Parada de Sil and Sober. Its origin is tectonic rather than purely river-cut: fractures split the old plateau into huge blocks, and the Sil settled into the resulting channel.

    Did you know? Phylloxera devastated the local vineyards over about fifty years in the 19th century, until grafting onto resistant rootstocks revived them.

    More about Sil Canyon →

18. 18 Jardín de Cactus

    Jardín de Cactus de Lanzarote

    Spain · 13.7 km from Arrecife29.080° N 13.476° W

    

    Manrique designed the garden as an amphitheatre. Terraces of dark volcanic stone step down into the old pit, and on them grow some 4,500 plants of about 450 species of cacti and other succulents, gathered from the deserts of the Americas, Madagascar and other dry regions of the world.

    Did you know? Many of the plants came from the collection of a cactus grower from the nearby village of Haría, and the botanist Estanislao González Ferrer chose the species.

    More about Jardín de Cactus →

19. 19 Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild

    France · 5.7 km from Nice43.697° N 7.328° E

    

    The gardens were laid out between 1905 and 1912 under the landscape architect Achille Duchêne, and they were conceived as a ship. Seen from the loggia, which served as its bridge, the long garden runs down the spine of the headland like a deck, with water visible on every side; the idea is said to have come from a voyage on the liner Île de France, and the thirty gardeners wore sailors' outfits with red pom-pom berets.

    Did you know? Among the furnishings is a whist table that once belonged to Queen Marie-Antoinette.

    More about Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild →

20. 20 Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park

    Parque Nacional de Ordesa y Monte Perdido

    Spain42.672° N 0.056° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage
    • UNESCO natural beauty

    

    Four valleys radiate from the massif, each with its own character. The Ordesa valley is the classic one — a U-shaped trough carved by glaciers, its sides layered like a cut cake, with a trail climbing past a string of waterfalls to the Circo de Soaso and the horsetail fall of the Cola de Caballo.

    Did you know? Some 1,400 plant species grow in the park, about 45 percent of all Pyrenean flora, including more than 80 endemics.

    More about Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park →

21. 21 Teide National Park

    Parque Nacional del Teide

    Spain28.276° N 16.643° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage
    • UNESCO natural beauty

    

    Most visitors come for the landscape, which looks unlike anything else in Europe. Lava flows of different ages lie across the caldera floor in black, brown and rust; the plain of Ucanca stretches flat and pale beneath the peak; the eroded rock towers of the Roques de García stand like sculptures beside the road; the pumice fields of Minas de San José look lunar.

    More about Teide National Park →

22. 22 Keukenhof

    Kingdom of the Netherlands · 13.6 km from Haarlem52.269° N 4.547° E

    

    The ground has a long past. In the fifteenth century it belonged to the hunting grounds of Countess Jacoba of Bavaria, and its herb and vegetable plots supplied her castle kitchen, which is what the name Keukenhof, "kitchen garden", recalls.

    Did you know? In 2025 about 1.4 million people came, some 26,500 a day, more than three times the daily attendance of Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum.

    More about Keukenhof →

23. 23 Herrenhausen Gardens

    Herrenhäuser Gärten

    Germany · 3 km from Hanover52.392° N 9.698° E

    

    The garden owes its form to Electress Sophia of Hanover, who from 1683 had the French gardener Martin Charbonnier enlarge an older kitchen garden into the formal plan that survives today. Her son became King George I of Great Britain in 1714, and for more than a century the Electors of Hanover also wore the British crown, which made Herrenhausen the summer seat of a dynasty that ruled two countries.

    Did you know? In the neighbouring Berggarten, attempts to grow rice failed, but mulberries thrived, and from 1706 their leaves fed the silkworms of the royal silk works in Hamelin.

    More about Herrenhausen Gardens →

24. 24 Stourhead

    United Kingdom · 31 km from Bath51.106° N 2.318° W

    

    The buildings are placed like figures in a picture. The Temple of Flora, from the 1740s, was the first. Across the water stands the domed Pantheon by Henry Flitcroft, built in 1753–54, the focal point of the whole garden and the view everyone remembers: its white portico mirrored in the lake, framed by trees.

    Did you know? St Peter's Pump, a medieval pump house re-erected in the grounds, marks Six Wells Bottom, long regarded as the source of the River Stour.

    More about Stourhead →

25. 25 Garajonay National Park

    Parque nacional de Garajonay

    Spain28.126° N 17.237° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage
    • UNESCO natural beauty

    

    The forest changes character with its exposure. In the sheltered, north-facing valleys it is at its richest, a true subtropical rainforest with the tallest laurels; on the slopes it thins, and on the drier southern side it gives way to a lower forest of heather adapted to less humid air.

    More about Garajonay National Park →

26. 26 The Needles

    United Kingdom · 29.6 km from Southampton50.663° N 1.589° W

    

    Their shape owes much to the earth movements of the Alpine mountain-building period, which folded the chalk beds here until they stood almost on end. That near-vertical layering is why the stacks break away as thin, upright slabs rather than rounded lumps. There used to be a fourth: a slender pillar, said to have been around 120 feet tall and known as Lot's Wife, which fell during a storm in 1764.

    Did you know? The lighthouse was designed by the engineer James Walker for Trinity House and cost £20,000, a substantial sum in the 1850s.

    More about The Needles →

27. 27 Crooked Forest

    Krzywy Las

    Poland · 23.3 km from Szczecin53.214° N 14.475° E

    

    The grove is small — about a third of a hectare — and sits inside an otherwise ordinary managed forest, which only sharpens the effect: the straight pines around it make the bent ones look deliberate, and they almost certainly are. The trees were planted in the 1930s, probably around 1934, when this land lay in the German province of Pomerania, and how they came to grow like this was never written down.

    Did you know? A popular but unproven story blames the curves on tanks or other military vehicles flattening the young trees during the Second World War.

    More about Crooked Forest →

28. 28 Landmannalaugar

    Iceland63.989° N 19.064° W

    

    The colours come from rhyolite, a silica-rich volcanic rock that is rare in basalt-dominated Iceland. Landmannalaugar sits within the Torfajökull volcanic system, the largest area of rhyolite in the country, and heat and water rising from below have altered the rock into clays and oxides of every hue: iron gives the reds and yellows, other minerals the greens and blues.

    Did you know? Torfajökull, the volcano beneath the area, has a caldera about 18 by 12 km and about 450 square kilometres of rhyolite, the largest such deposit in Iceland.

    More about Landmannalaugar →

29. 29 Hundred-Horse Chestnut

    Castagno dei Cento Cavalli

    Italy · 28 km from Catania37.749° N 15.132° E

    

    Above ground the tree has divided into several massive trunks that share a single root system, so that what looks like a small grove is in fact one living organism. When it was measured in 1780 its trunk had a circumference of 57.9 m, a figure recorded by Guinness World Records as the greatest tree girth ever measured. It grows on the fertile volcanic soils of the mountain about 8 km from the summit crater, in a landscape of chestnut woods.

    Did you know? The French artist Jean-Pierre Houël painted the tree in gouache around 1777 during his tour of Sicily.

    More about Hundred-Horse Chestnut →

30. 30 Mount Pico

    Montanha do Pico

    Portugal · 22.6 km from Horta38.469° N 28.399° W

    

    Pico is a young stratovolcano, built up within the last 230,000 years, and part of its slopes are younger still. At the top lies Pico Alto, a crater about 500 metres across and 30 metres deep, from which a small secondary cone, Piquinho or Pico Pequeno, climbs another 70 metres to form the true summit.

    Did you know? All of Pico's historical eruptions broke out from vents on its flanks rather than from the summit crater.

    More about Mount Pico →