The Most Beautiful Places in Alberta
6 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Alberta are Banff National Park, Lake Louise and Peyto Lake. The list covers 6 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Alberta's mountain landscapes lie along the eastern side of the Canadian Rockies, where the Continental Divide runs between the province and British Columbia. Glaciers and icefields here feed the lakes below with fine rock flour, which hangs in the water and gives them their milky turquoise colour. It was also here that Canada created its first national park, in 1885, around the hot springs at Banff.
Banff National Park contains several of the lakes in this list. Lake Louise faces the Victoria Glacier across its turquoise water, with a grand railway hotel at its other end. Nearby Moraine Lake sits in the Valley of the Ten Peaks; its view once appeared on the back of a Canadian twenty-dollar note. Peyto Lake, seen from above along the Icefields Parkway, has a long shape often compared to a wolf's head.
Further north, in Jasper National Park, Maligne Lake stretches between high peaks, and the small wooded Spirit Island near its far end is one of the most photographed views in the Rockies. On the eastern slopes, Abraham Lake is a reservoir on the North Saskatchewan River; in winter its clear ice holds frozen columns of gas bubbles rising from the lake bed. Together they show how glaciers, rock and light make the Alberta Rockies one of the great lake landscapes of the world.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Banff National Park | Protected area | |
| 2 | Lake Louise | Lake | |
| 3 | Peyto Lake | Lake | |
| 4 | Moraine Lake | Lake | |
| 5 | Maligne Lake | Lake | |
| 6 | Abraham Lake | Reservoir |
01 Banff National Park
Canada · 2 km from Banff51.167° N 115.550° W
Image by NUNZG from Pixabay Banff was Canada's first national park, created in 1885 when the government set aside a small reserve around hot springs that railway workers had stumbled on at Cave and Basin; it has since grown to about 6,641 square kilometres of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta.
Did you know? The park began life in 1885 under the name Rocky Mountains Park.
02 Lake Louise
Canada51.412° N 116.228° W
Chensiyuan · CC BY-SA 4.0 Lake Louise is small – about 2 km long and half a kilometre wide – but few mountain lakes are so perfectly composed. At its western end the Victoria Glacier hangs on the shoulder of Mount Victoria, and the whole scene funnels towards it between steep forested walls.
Did you know? The Lake Agnes Tea House above the lake was built by the railway in 1901 as a shelter for hikers and has served tea since 1905.
03 Peyto Lake
Canada51.725° N 116.522° W
Tobias Alt, Tobi 87 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Peyto Lake is the classic view of the Icefields Parkway: from a lookout high above, a long glacial lake of startling turquoise lies in a forested valley, with ranks of peaks marching away to the north.
Did you know? Since 1987 an automatic weather station beside the glacier has logged temperature, radiation and precipitation for climate research.
04 Moraine Lake
Canada51.322° N 116.186° W
Image by 12019 from Pixabay Moraine Lake lies at about 1,884 metres in the Valley of the Ten Peaks in Banff National Park, a small lake of some 50 hectares held in a cirque of rock walls and glaciers. Its fame rests on its colour.
Did you know? The lake is fed almost entirely by melting snow and ice, so it only reaches its full level in mid to late June.
05 Maligne Lake
Canada52.664° N 117.534° W
Christian Abend from Laufen /, Bayern / Deutschland · CC BY-SA 2.0 5 km of milky blue-green water, up to 97 m deep, lying at about 1,670 m above sea level. Its northern end is easy to reach by road, but the lake bends out of sight to the south, so the real view opens only from the water, where the shoreline closes in and glaciers come down towards it.
Did you know? Lawren Harris of the Group of Seven camped at the lake in 1924; his painting Maligne Lake, Jasper Park was bought by the National Gallery of Canada in 1928.
06 Abraham Lake
Canada52.224° N 116.427° W
Joli Rumi · CC BY-SA 4.0 Abraham Lake is a reminder that a reservoir can be as striking as any glacial lake. It came into being in 1972, when the Bighorn Dam, built by what was then the Calgary Power Company, held back the North Saskatchewan River on the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies.
Did you know? The dam went ahead without any study of its social or environmental effects and without public hearings.
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 places in Alberta?
- On our list, Banff National Park ranks first, followed by Lake Louise and Peyto Lake.
- Why are Lake Louise and Moraine Lake so turquoise?
- Glacial meltwater carries rock flour, extremely fine particles ground by glaciers. Suspended in the water, they reflect blue and green light, giving the lakes their colour.
- What causes the bubbles in Abraham Lake?
- Decaying plant matter on the lake bed releases methane. In winter the gas bubbles rise and freeze into the ice in layers, creating the stacked white discs visible through clear ice.
- Which is the oldest national park in Canada?
- Banff National Park, established in 1885 around the Cave and Basin hot springs. It was the first national park in Canada and among the first in the world.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Alberta?
- In our collection, the places in Alberta are most often lakes (4), reservoirs (1), national parks (1) and nature sanctuaries (1).
- How many places are on this list in Alberta?
- The list covers 6 places.