The Most Beautiful Places in Chile
26 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Chile are Torres del Paine National Park, Marble Caves (General Carrera Lake) and Valle de la Luna, Atacama. The list covers 26 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Chile is a ribbon more than 4,000 kilometres long squeezed between the Andes and the Pacific, and almost every kind of landscape lies somewhere along it. The subduction of the Nazca Plate beneath South America feeds a chain of volcanoes, the cold Humboldt Current keeps the Atacama in the north one of the driest places on Earth, and in Patagonia ice fields and granite spires rise above glacial lakes. Far offshore, Easter Island adds one of the most famous cultural landscapes of the Pacific.
On Rapa Nui, the moai carved by the island's Polynesian settlers stand on stone platforms with their backs to the sea. In the north, the perfect cone of Licancabur rises above the Atacama, Laguna Miscanti lies in deep blue on the high plateau, and near the Bolivian border Lake Chungará reflects the snow-capped Parinacota at an altitude of some 4,500 metres. The dry, thin air of the desert drew astronomers: the antennas of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array stand on the Chajnantor plateau at about 5,000 metres, and Paranal Observatory crowns a mountain near the coast.
Further south, Osorno's symmetrical cone is often compared with Mount Fuji, and Villarrica is one of the few volcanoes in the world with a lava lake in its crater. Torres del Paine is named for its three granite towers above glaciers and lakes in Patagonia. Human history appears too: the Humberstone and Santa Laura saltpeter works are a ghost town of the nitrate boom, and Santiago's Church of San Francisco, begun in the sixteenth century, has outlasted centuries of earthquakes.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Torres del Paine National Park | National park | |
| 2 | Marble Caves (General Carrera Lake) | Show cave | |
| 3 | Valle de la Luna, Atacama | Rock formation | |
| 4 | Ahu Tongariki | Megalith | |
| 5 | Lake Chungará | Lake | |
| 6 | Osorno Volcano | Volcano | |
| 7 | Termas Geométricas | Thermal bath | |
| 8 | El Tatio | Geyser | |
| 9 | Easter Island | Island | |
| 10 | Licancabur | Volcano | |
| 11 | Villarrica Volcano | Volcano | |
| 12 | Atacama Large Millimeter Array | Radio telescope | |
| 13 | Laguna Miscanti | Lake | |
| 14 | Paranal Observatory | Observatory | |
| 15 | Church of San Francisco, Castro | Church building | ✓ |
| 16 | Parinacota | Volcano | |
| 17 | Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works | Factory | ✓ |
| 18 | Sewell Mining Town | Industrial heritage site | |
| 19 | Mano del Desierto | Sculpture | |
| 20 | Atacama Giant | Geoglyph | |
| 21 | San Rafael Lagoon | Lagoon | |
| 22 | San Rafael Glacier | Glacier | |
| 23 | Salar de Tara | Salt flat | |
| 24 | Cuernos del Paine | Mountain | |
| 25 | Cascada de Ventisquero Colgante | Glacier | |
| 26 | Petrohué Waterfalls | Waterfall |
01 Torres del Paine National Park
Parque Nacional Torres del Paine
Chile50.983° S 72.966° W
Image by plutozoom from Pixabay Torres del Paine takes its name from three granite pillars that rise almost vertically out of the Patagonian steppe: the Torre d'Agostini, the Torre Central and the Torre Monzino, each around 2,500 metres high.
Did you know? The North Tower takes its name from Guido Monzino, whose Italian expedition made its first ascent in January 1958.
02 Marble Caves (General Carrera Lake)
Catedral de Mármol
Chile46.646° S 72.609° W
Dentren at en.wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Marble Cathedral is a great block of marble standing in the turquoise water of General Carrera Lake in Chilean Patagonia, hollowed through by the lake itself into arches, pillars and vaulted passages.
Did you know? The lake's colour comes from fine glacial silt suspended in the water, which absorbs violet and indigo light and reflects blues and greens.
03 Valle de la Luna, Atacama
Valle de la Luna
Chile22.911° S 68.323° W
Image by rumpelstilzken from Pixabay Valle de la Luna, the Valley of the Moon, lies in the Cordillera de la Sal just west of San Pedro de Atacama, in one of the driest deserts on Earth.
Did you know? The only life found in the soil so far is bacteria living a few millimetres inside translucent salt, shielded there from intense ultraviolet light.
04 Ahu Tongariki
Chile27.126° S 109.277° W
The original uploader was Hhooper1 at English Wikipedia . · CC BY 2.5 Fifteen giants stand shoulder to shoulder at Ahu Tongariki, their backs to the Pacific and their faces turned towards the grassy plain that once held a village.
Did you know? A photograph from the 1914 Mana Expedition, now in the British Museum, shows every statue along this stretch of coast still lying overturned.
05 Lake Chungará
Chile18.242° S 69.153° W
Fabolu · CC BY-SA 3.0 Lake Chungará lies at 4,517 metres on the Altiplano of northernmost Chile, close to the Bolivian border,. The setting is what makes it unforgettable: on its northern side rises Parinacota, a near-perfect snow-capped cone of 6,342 metres, mirrored in the still water on calm mornings, with its twin Pomerape just beyond.
Did you know? The lake holds about 0.4 cubic kilometres of water and about four fifths of its inflow comes from a single stream, the Río Chungará.
06 Osorno Volcano
Volcán Osorno
Chile41.100° S 72.493° W
Draceane · CC BY-SA 4.0 Few volcanoes on earth come closer to the ideal drawn by a child than Osorno. It rises to 2,652 metres in a cone so regular that it is constantly compared with Mount Fuji, and its upper third wears a permanent cap of ice that stays white even at the end of the southern summer.
Did you know? Darwin watched the 1835 eruption from Ancud on Chiloé, though some of his reports of simultaneous eruptions elsewhere later proved mistaken.
07 Termas Geométricas
Chile · 39.3 km from Villarrica39.502° S 71.875° W
Falk2 · CC BY-SA 4.0 In a narrow, forested ravine on the edge of Villarrica National Park, the Chilean architect Germán del Sol turned a hot mountain stream into one of the most photographed bathing places in South America.
Did you know? The red walkway is built of coihue, a native southern beech, and forms one continuous ramp with no steps.
08 El Tatio
Chile22.331° S 68.010° W
Image by michellebranco11 from Pixabay El Tatio is a field of geysers and boiling springs on a high Andean plain in northern Chile, 4,320 metres above sea level, beneath a line of volcanoes that marks the border with Bolivia.
Did you know? Italian engineers from Larderello, the cradle of geothermal power, first probed the field for energy in 1921 and 1922.
09 Easter Island
Chile27.120° S 109.350° W
Image by 3282700 from Pixabay The single biggest puzzle Easter Island still hands visitors is how a Polynesian society without draft animals, wheels or metal tools moved statues weighing as much as 80 tons for kilometres over rough ground. For decades the default answer was rollers and ropes, dragged flat.
Did you know? A tsunami from the great 1960 Chilean earthquake swept Ahu Tongariki inland; a Japanese crane maker helped re-erect it in the 1990s.
10 Licancabur
Volcán Licancabur
Chile22.834° S 67.883° W
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0 Licancabur is the volcano that closes the eastern horizon of San Pedro de Atacama: a near-perfect cone of 5,916 metres standing exactly on the border between Chile and Bolivia, dark against a sky that is almost always cloudless. Its symmetry is what makes it so compelling.
Did you know? Scientists study the lake as a stand-in for ancient lakes on Mars, and in 2006 a NASA-supported team led by Nathalie Cabrol made scuba dives in it at record altitude.
11 Villarrica Volcano
Volcán Villarrica
Chile · 29.5 km from Villarrica39.420° S 71.939° W
Image by Quimantu from Pixabay Villarrica is one of the most perfectly shaped volcanoes in the southern Andes: a snow- and ice-covered cone of 2,847 metres (some sources give 2,860) that rises directly above Lake Villarrica and the town of Pucón, frequently trailing a thin plume of gas from its summit.
Did you know? Constant degassing from the lava lake makes the magma more viscous, which in turn raises the volcano's potential for explosive eruptions.
12 Atacama Large Millimeter Array
Chile23.019° S 67.753° W
Iztok Bončina/ESO · CC BY 4.0 High on the Chajnantor plateau in the Chilean Atacama, some 5,000 metres above sea level, sixty-six white dishes stand in a landscape of ochre dust and bare volcanoes.
Did you know? Each large antenna weighs about 115 tonnes, and the German-built transporters that carry them have driver seats designed to take an oxygen tank.
13 Laguna Miscanti
Chile23.725° S 67.765° W
Godot13 · CC BY-SA 4.0 High on the Chilean Altiplano, at about 4,140 metres, Laguna Miscanti is a sheet of water so intensely blue that it looks painted onto the land. Its shape is often compared to an arrowhead, with a small peninsula pushing in from the north, and it lies in an open basin of ochre volcanic slopes.
Did you know? With about 5 grams of salt per litre, Miscanti is the least salty of all the lakes in its region.
14 Paranal Observatory
Observatorio Paranal
Chile24.627° S 70.404° W
European Southern Observatory · CC BY 4.0 Cerro Paranal is a bare summit 2,635 metres high in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, and on its levelled top the European Southern Observatory has built its flagship observatory.
Did you know? In 2004 the VLT photographed 2M1207b, a planet-mass companion of a young brown dwarf, widely hailed as the first direct image of an exoplanet.
15 Church of San Francisco, Castro
Iglesia de San Francisco
Chile · 0.1 km from Castro42.481° S 73.764° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Rjcastillo · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Church of San Francisco fills one side of the Plaza de Armas in Castro, the capital of Chiloé, and it is impossible to miss: a neo-Gothic church with two 42-metre towers, a 32-metre dome over the sanctuary and a facade that is usually painted in bright colours.
Did you know? The raulí wood used for the interior was brought over from the Chilean mainland rather than cut on the island.
16 Parinacota
Volcán Parinacota
Chile18.166° S 69.142° W
Gerd Breitenbach · CC BY-SA 3.0 Parinacota is the volcano that children draw: a near-perfect cone of snow and dark rock rising to about 6,380 m on the border of Chile and Bolivia.
Did you know? Some of the Cotacotani lakes may be kettle holes, formed when blocks of glacier ice carried along inside the avalanche later melted away.
17 Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works
Chile · 6.8 km from Pozo Almonte20.208° S 69.794° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0 In the bone-dry pampa of the Atacama Desert east of Iquique, two abandoned company towns preserve the world of the nitrate boom that made northern Chile one of the richest mining regions on earth.
Did you know? At its peak Santa Laura housed only 426 people, while neighbouring Humberstone grew to more than 3,700.
18 Sewell Mining Town
Sewell
Chile · 34.3 km from Rancagua34.085° S 70.382° W
Marcelo Páez Bermúdez · CC BY 2.0 Sewell is a company town built where no town should fit: on a steep mountainside of the Chilean Andes, at between 2,000 and 2,250 metres, above the El Teniente copper mine — the largest underground copper mine in the world.
Did you know? In June 1945 a fire outside the mine sent smoke into El Teniente, killing 355 workers in what became known as the Smoke Tragedy and prompting new safety laws.
19 Mano del Desierto
Chile24.158° S 70.157° W
Marcos Escalier from Antofagasta, Chile. · CC BY-SA 2.0 Sixty-odd kilometres of empty road south of Antofagasta, in the Atacama Desert, a giant left hand breaks up through the gravel, fingers spread, as if someone buried under the plain were reaching for air.
Did you know? He trained in West Germany under the sculptor Waldemar Otto, whose figurative expressionism shaped the long limbs and awkward poses typical of his figures.
20 Atacama Giant
Gigante de Atacama
Chile · 39.6 km from Pozo Almonte19.949° S 69.633° W
Sznegra · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Atacama Giant is a human figure laid out on the western slope of Cerro Unita, an isolated hill rising from the pampa of the Tarapacá region in northern Chile.
Did you know? Some scholars see in it Tunupa, an Andean deity who, according to colonial chronicles, wandered from Lake Titicaca all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
21 San Rafael Lagoon
Laguna San Rafael
Chile46.667° S 73.933° W
Vincent Huang · CC BY 2.0 At the head of a remote inlet on Chile's Pacific coast, a wall of blue ice breaks into a lagoon studded with floating icebergs.
Did you know? The lagoon is separated from the Gulf of Penas only by the Isthmus of Ofqui, a strip of land just two or three kilometres wide.
22 San Rafael Glacier
Glaciar San Rafael
Chile46.700° S 73.833° W
Vincent Huang · CC BY 2.0 San Rafael Glacier is a great tongue of ice spilling west from the Northern Patagonian Ice Field in Chile's Aysén region, into the round lagoon of Laguna San Rafael.
Did you know? The glacier's ice averages nearly 300 metres thick, and its total volume is estimated at about 211 cubic kilometres.
23 Salar de Tara
Chile23.017° S 67.300° W
Carlos Urzua · CC BY 2.0 Salar de Tara lies at about 4,300 metres in the high puna of Chile's Atacama region, close to where Chile, Argentina and Bolivia meet.
Did you know? La Pacana's eruption around 4 million years ago produced the Atana ignimbrite, one of the largest explosive eruptions known on Earth.
24 Cuernos del Paine
Chile51.002° S 73.012° W
Image by jmarti20 from Pixabay The Horns of Paine are the most arresting silhouette in Chilean Patagonia: a jagged row of towers rising about 2,600 metres, their lower walls of pale grey granite abruptly capped by bands of almost black rock, as if someone had set dark hats on the peaks.
Did you know? The first ascent of Cuerno Principal was made by Aguilera, García, Latorre and Oyarzún, climbing the southwest ridge.
25 Cascada de Ventisquero Colgante
Chile44.437° S 72.504° W
LBM1948 · CC BY-SA 4.0 High above a rainforest valley in Chilean Patagonia, a tongue of ice hangs over the lip of a cliff, and from beneath it a band of meltwater drops in a single vertical plunge before sliding down a tilted shelf of bedrock.
Did you know? Part of the Puyuhuapi Volcanic Group lies inside the park, south of Lake Risopatrón.
26 Petrohué Waterfalls
Saltos de Petrohué
Chile41.172° S 72.447° W
P. Hughes · CC BY 4.0 The Petrohué Waterfalls are not tall. What makes them remarkable is the river and the rock.
Did you know? Torrent ducks, birds adapted to fast whitewater, are sometimes seen feeding in the rapids.
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 Chile?
- On our list, Torres del Paine National Park ranks first, followed by Marble Caves (General Carrera Lake) and Valle de la Luna, Atacama.
- Why are so many observatories built in the Atacama Desert?
- The Atacama combines extremely dry air, high altitude and very few clouds, giving some of the clearest and steadiest skies on Earth. Low water vapour is especially important for observing at millimetre wavelengths, which is why ALMA was built on the Chajnantor plateau.
- What are the moai of Easter Island?
- The moai are monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people, mostly from volcanic tuff quarried at the crater of Rano Raraku. Many were placed on ceremonial platforms called ahu and are believed to represent deified ancestors.
- Is the Villarrica volcano active?
- Yes. Villarrica is one of the most active volcanoes in South America and has erupted repeatedly in recorded history. Its summit crater often holds an active lava lake, a rare feature among the world's volcanoes.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Chile?
- In our collection, the places in Chile are most often volcanoes (4), glaciers (2), lakes (2) and mountains (1).
- How many places are on this list in Chile?
- The list covers 26 places.