The Most Beautiful National Parks in Europe
11 places in 5 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful national parks in Europe are Plitvice Lakes National Park (Croatia), Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park (Spain) and Teide National Park (Spain). The list covers 11 national parks in 5 countries. Spain has the most, with 7. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Europe packs a remarkable range of landscapes into a small area, and its national parks protect the best of them: glacial valleys in the high mountains, limestone canyons and karst, moving coastal dunes, wild Atlantic islands and sandstone rock cities. Many of these places have been shaped by people for centuries, so the parks often guard both scenery and a long history of grazing, forestry and settlement. Sweden set up the continent's first national parks in 1909, and the idea spread from the Arctic to the Mediterranean.
Plitvice Lakes in Croatia is a chain of lakes stepping down a forested valley, divided by travertine barriers that are still growing and linked by countless waterfalls. Ordesa y Monte Perdido in the Spanish Pyrenees, one of Spain's oldest national parks, cuts deep canyons into limestone below the Monte Perdido massif. On the Baltic coast of Poland, Słowiński National Park is known for its shifting dunes near Łeba, which move inland and bury the forest in their path.
The coasts bring further contrasts. The Cíes Islands off Galicia rise from the Atlantic at the mouth of the Ría de Vigo, with the white sand of Rodas beach linking two of the islands. The Calanques National Park, between Marseille and Cassis, is a line of narrow limestone inlets with steep white walls dropping into deep blue water. And in České Švýcarsko, Bohemian Switzerland, sandstone has been eroded into towers, gorges and Pravčická brána, the largest natural sandstone arch in Europe.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Plitvice Lakes National Park | National park | Croatia | ✓ |
| 2 | Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park | National park | Spain | ✓ |
| 3 | Teide National Park | National park | Spain | ✓ |
| 4 | Garajonay National Park | National park | Spain | ✓ |
| 5 | Słowiński National Park | National park | Poland | |
| 6 | Cíes Islands | National park | Spain | |
| 7 | Calanques National Park | Protected area | France | |
| 8 | Caldera de Taburiente National Park | National park | Spain | |
| 9 | České Švýcarsko National Park | National park | Czech Republic | |
| 10 | Timanfaya National Park | National park | Spain | |
| 11 | Picos de Europa National Park | National park | Spain |
01 Plitvice Lakes National Park
Nacionalni park Plitvička jezera
Croatia44.880° N 15.616° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by Hobbyfotography from Pixabay 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? Its Veliki slap, the Great Waterfall, plunges 78 metres.
02 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
Image by vilanchelo from Pixabay 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. Añisclo, Escuaín and Pineta are the others, each a deep cut into the massif, and together they show how differently ice and running water have worked the same rock. Above, chamois graze the ledges, marmots whistle in the meadows, and bearded vultures and golden eagles ride the updrafts.
Did you know? The last Pyrenean ibex, a female named Celia, was found dead on 6 January 2000, crushed by a falling tree.
03 Teide National Park
Parque Nacional del Teide
Spain28.276° N 16.643° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by Barni1 from Pixabay 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. The resemblance is not only poetic — the park's terrain is so close to that of Mars that ESA and NASA have tested instruments and rovers here. On a ridge east of the peak sit the telescopes of the Teide Observatory, where the sun shines nearly 3,500 hours a year.
04 Garajonay National Park
Parque nacional de Garajonay
Spain28.126° N 17.237° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by nike159 from Pixabay 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. Many of the plants and invertebrates are found nowhere outside Macaronesia, and the park is one of the best places to see the Canaries' two endemic pigeons, the laurel pigeon and Bolle's pigeon. A network of eighteen footpaths runs through it, and the visitor centre stands at Juego de Bolas near Agulo.
05 Słowiński National Park
Słowiński Park Narodowy
Poland54.703° N 17.307° E
Image by Intpress from Pixabay The moving dunes near Łeba are the largest such field in Europe and the reason most people come. The highest, Łącka Góra, rises around 40 metres above the sea, and from its crest the view takes in a landscape that seems to belong to another continent: a pale, rippled desert of sand, with the grey-blue Baltic on one side and the reedy expanse of Łebsko on the other. In spring 2016 the wind uncovered the stumps of a forest buried several thousand years ago - a reminder that the dunes have been travelling here for a very long time. Walk on to the north and the sand runs straight down to the open Baltic beach.
Did you know? From the late 1960s into the 1970s, Polish scientists launched Meteor meteorological rockets from the same former German test site near Łeba.
06 Cíes Islands
Illas Cíes
Spain · 14.1 km from Vigo42.233° N 8.900° W
Image by sitoruiz from Pixabay The western cliffs are the islands' other character. They drop more than 100 metres into the sea, cut into caves and ledges, and they belong to the birds: the archipelago holds around 22,000 pairs of gulls and is one of the major seabird colonies of Europe. Walking paths climb from the beaches to the summits - the highest point, Alto das Cíes on Monteagudo, reaches 197 metres - and to the lighthouse on O Faro, first lit in the nineteenth century, from where the whole archipelago, the beaches and the open Atlantic are laid out at once. Under the water lie forests of brown algae, and dolphins are regularly seen in the surrounding sea.
Did you know? Atlantic storms tend to pass over the islands and unload on the mainland, so the Cíes get only about half the rain of the surrounding Rías Baixas.
07 Calanques National Park
Parc national des Calanques
France · 11.1 km from Marseille43.209° N 5.449° E
kallerna · CC BY-SA 4.0 The national park was created by decree in April 2012, and it is unusual in reaching right up to the edge of a large city. It covers about 520 square kilometres, of which only around 85 are on land; the rest is sea, including the islands of the Riou archipelago. Despite the dry, wind-scoured hills, the massif holds roughly 900 plant species, many of them adapted to drought and salt spray, and the cliffs shelter Bonelli's eagle and nesting shearwaters, while red coral, groupers and meadows of seagrass live below the surface.
Did you know? Calanques was the first national park in Europe to protect land and sea together on the very edge of a major city.
08 Caldera de Taburiente National Park
Parque nacional de la Caldera de Taburiente
Spain28.754° N 17.885° W
Luc Viatour · CC BY-SA 3.0 Despite its name, the caldera was not created by a single volcanic explosion. Over several million years, a series of overlapping shield volcanoes built up a mountain in the north of La Palma some 3,000 metres high. Around half a million years ago its south-western flank gave way and slid towards the ocean in a gigantic landslide, and running water has been widening and deepening the resulting hollow ever since. The basin drains to the sea through a single deep gorge, the Barranco de las Angustias, and streams fed by springs flow year-round inside it, a rarity in the Canary Islands.
Did you know? Its highest point, the Roque de los Muchachos on the northern rim, rises to 2,426 metres.
09 České Švýcarsko National Park
Národní park České Švýcarsko
Czech Republic · 32.8 km from Ústí nad Labem50.883° N 14.389° E
Huhulenik · CC BY 3.0 The emblem of the park is Pravčická brána, the largest natural sandstone arch in Europe, with a span of 26.5 metres and an opening 16 metres high. Walking on the arch itself has been forbidden since 1982 because of the erosion caused by visitors, but it can be seen at close range from the surrounding paths and terraces. Tucked beneath it is Sokolí hnízdo, the Falcon's Nest, a picturesque inn built in 1881 by Prince Edmund of Clary-Aldringen, whose family did more than anyone to turn this wilderness into a destination. Scenes of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe were filmed among these rocks.
Did you know? Since 2000 young Atlantic salmon have been released into the Kamenice, a river the fish once climbed to spawn before dams on the Elbe cut them off.
10 Timanfaya National Park
Parque Nacional de Timanfaya
Spain · 24.1 km from Arrecife29.014° N 13.780° W
Image by neufal54 from Pixabay Much of what is known about the first months comes from the parish priest of Yaiza, Andrés Lorenzo Curbelo, whose account describes a mountain rising out of the earth in a single night and rivers of fire running down to the sea, while the inhabitants fled and returned and fled again. Today the area is still called the Montañas del Fuego, the Fire Mountains, and the name is not just poetry. Just beneath the surface the ground is still remarkably hot, and some 13 metres down temperatures reach several hundred degrees; at the Islote de Hilario, water poured into a shaft bursts back out as a column of steam within seconds.
Did you know? A later, much shorter eruption on Lanzarote took place in 1824.
11 Picos de Europa National Park
Parque nacional de Picos de Europa
Spain43.250° N 4.917° W
- biosphere reserve
Image by javierAlamo from Pixabay The mountains are built of thick Palaeozoic limestone, carved by glaciers during the Ice Ages and riddled since by the dissolving action of water into sinkholes, deep shafts and enormous cave systems. Three massifs are separated by gorges of startling depth, the most famous being the gorge of the river Cares, whose path cut into the cliff between Poncebos and Caín threads along the wall high above the water.
Did you know? The Torre de Cerredo, at about 2,648 m, is the highest summit in the Picos de Europa.
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 national parks in Europe?
- On our list, Plitvice Lakes National Park (Croatia) ranks first, followed by Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park (Spain) and Teide National Park (Spain).
- Which country has the most national parks in Europe?
- In our collection, the most come from Spain (7), Croatia (1) and the Czech Republic (1).
- Which country created Europe's first national parks?
- Sweden, which established nine national parks in 1909, including Abisko and Sarek in Lapland.
- How were the Plitvice Lakes formed?
- The lakes are held back by natural dams of travertine, a limestone deposit laid down as calcium carbonate settles out of the water onto mosses and algae. Over thousands of years these barriers grew and divided the valley into a series of lakes.
- What is the largest natural sandstone arch in Europe?
- Pravčická brána in the Czech Republic's České Švýcarsko National Park, a span of about 26 metres in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains.
- How many national parks are on this list in Europe?
- The list covers 11 national parks in 5 countries. Spain has the most, with 7.