The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests in Portugal
5 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful gardens, parks and forests in Portugal are Mount Pico, Pico Island Vineyards and Laurisilva of Madeira. The list covers 5 gardens, parks and forests. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Portugal's living landscapes reach from the mainland far out into the Atlantic. On the volcanic islands of the Azores and Madeira, mild ocean climate has preserved forests and allowed vineyards to grow on bare lava, while on the mainland centuries of patient work turned steep river valleys into terraced vineyards. Several of these landscapes are recognised by UNESCO as the joint work of nature and people.
Mount Pico in the Azores is the highest mountain in Portugal, a symmetrical volcano rising from the Atlantic. At its foot, the Pico Island vineyards are a network of small plots enclosed by dry-stone walls of black basalt, built to shelter vines from wind and salt. The Laurisilva of Madeira is the largest surviving area of a laurel forest that once covered much of southern Europe. The Alto Douro Wine Region, where port wine is produced, is a valley of terraced slopes and one of the oldest regulated wine regions in the world. The Lisbon Oceanarium, built for Expo 98, houses a vast central tank representing the open ocean.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mount Pico | Volcano | |
| 2 | Pico Island Vineyards | Vineyard landscape | ✓ |
| 3 | Laurisilva of Madeira | Forest | ✓ |
| 4 | Alto Douro Wine Region | Vineyard landscape | |
| 5 | Lisbon Oceanarium | Public aquarium |
01 Mount Pico
Montanha do Pico
Portugal · 22.6 km from Horta38.469° N 28.399° W
José Luís Ávila Silveira/Pedro Noronha e Costa · Public domain 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.
02 Pico Island Vineyards
Portugal · 9.3 km from Horta38.513° N 28.541° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Navin75 · CC BY-SA 2.0 Viticulture arrived with Portuguese settlers, including Franciscan and Carmelite friars, in the late 15th century. By the 19th century Pico's wine, above all its Verdelho, was exported widely; island tradition proudly recalls that it reached tables as far away as the Americas and the court of the Russian tsars. Then powdery mildew and phylloxera struck in the mid-1800s, and the trade collapsed for generations.
Did you know? The oldest lava-field plots around Criação Velha are so meagre that they yield only about 200 to 300 kilograms of grapes per hectare.
03 Laurisilva of Madeira
Floresta Laurissilva na Madeira
Portugal · 17.1 km from Funchal32.767° N 17.000° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by adege from Pixabay What makes this forest feel otherworldly is water. Prevailing north-easterly winds push clouds against the mountains, and the forest lives in frequent fog between about 300 and 1,300 m on the north side. Trunks and branches are hung with mosses, lichens and ferns; the canopy is dominated by trees of the laurel family, such as Laurus novocanariensis, Ocotea foetens and Persea indica, along with Clethra arborea.
Did you know? Laurisilva now covers only about 16 per cent of Madeira, although before settlement it clothed most of the island.
04 Alto Douro Wine Region
Alto Douro Vinhateiro
Portugal · 23.3 km from Vila Real41.166° N 7.518° W
Aires Almeida from Portimão, Portugal · CC BY 2.0 Wine has been made here for nearly two thousand years, but the shape of the region was fixed in modern times by trade. On 10 September 1756 a royal Portuguese charter drew the boundaries of the vineyards allowed to produce port, making the Douro the first wine region in the world to receive a formal demarcation. The terraces themselves record the history of the trade.
Did you know? The UNESCO site of about 24,600 hectares is wrapped in a buffer zone of some 225,000 hectares.
05 Lisbon Oceanarium
Oceanário de Lisboa
Portugal · 6.3 km from Lisbon38.764° N 9.094° W
Alvesgaspar · CC BY-SA 3.0 Inside, the plan is one big idea carried through with clarity. At the centre lies a single vast tank, holding some five million litres of seawater and around seven metres deep, conceived as the open ocean. Sharks, rays, barracudas, groupers and shoals of smaller fish move through it at different depths, and among them, most often, an ocean sunfish, a strange, flattened giant rarely kept in captivity.
Did you know? Around 100 species share the central tank, from sharks and rays to moray eels, barracudas and Atlantic bluefin tuna.
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 Portugal?
- On our list, Mount Pico ranks first, followed by Pico Island Vineyards and Laurisilva of Madeira.
- How high is Mount Pico?
- Mount Pico rises to about 2,351 metres on Pico Island in the Azores, making it the highest point in Portugal.
- Why is the Laurisilva of Madeira special?
- It is a relic of the laurel forests that covered southern Europe millions of years ago, preserved by Madeira's humid climate. It was listed by UNESCO in 1999.
- When was the Douro wine region demarcated?
- The Douro was demarcated in 1756 under the Marquis of Pombal to protect the quality of port wine, making it one of the oldest regulated wine regions in the world.
- How many gardens, parks and forests are on this list in Portugal?
- The list covers 5 gardens, parks and forests.