The Most Beautiful Places in Chongqing
6 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Chongqing are Three Gorges, Xiaozhai Tiankeng and Three Natural Bridges. The list covers 6 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Chongqing is a vast municipality on the upper Yangtze, far larger than its mountain city core, and its countryside is some of the most dramatic karst terrain in China. Thick limestone, heavy rainfall and fast rivers have dissolved the rock into giant sinkholes, natural bridges and cave systems, while the Yangtze itself has sawn through the ranges at its eastern edge to form the first of the Three Gorges. Wulong's karst landscape is part of the South China Karst World Heritage Site.
Xiaozhai Tiankeng in Fengjie is one of the deepest known sinkholes on earth, a sheer-walled pit with a river running through its base. In Wulong, the Three Natural Bridges are colossal limestone arches spanning a single gorge, and Furong Cave nearby is filled with crystal formations, curtains and pools. Qutang Gorge, the shortest and narrowest of the Three Gorges, opens at Kuimen, a gateway of cliffs so famous that it appears on the back of a Chinese banknote.
The region also holds remarkable art. The Dazu Rock Carvings, cut into cliffs between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, include tens of thousands of figures, among them a great reclining Buddha and a thousand-armed Guanyin, and combine Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian imagery. Geology and devotion together make Chongqing one of the most surprising regions of inland China.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Three Gorges | Canyon | |
| 2 | Xiaozhai Tiankeng | Doline | |
| 3 | Three Natural Bridges | Natural arch | |
| 4 | Qutang Gorge | Canyon | |
| 5 | Dazu Rock Carvings | Archaeological site | ✓ |
| 6 | Furong Cave, Wulong | Cave |
01 Three Gorges
People's Republic of China · 4.4 km from Fengjie31.043° N 109.561° E
Zhaojundong · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Three Gorges are the most celebrated stretch of the Yangtze, the point where China's greatest river forces its way through the Wu Mountains between Chongqing and Hubei.
02 Xiaozhai Tiankeng
People's Republic of China · 33.6 km from Fengjie30.750° N 109.470° E
Brookqi · Public domain In the limestone uplands of Fengjie County, in the far east of Chongqing, the earth drops away into what is considered the deepest sinkhole in the world.
Did you know? In the rainy season a waterfall pours over the rim into the pit.
03 Three Natural Bridges
People's Republic of China29.434° N 107.801° E
Brookqi · Public domain In the karst country of Wulong, south-east of Chongqing, the Yangshui River has spent its life dissolving limestone from the inside. What it left behind is a rare sequence: three colossal natural arches strung along a single gorge, each the surviving roof of a cave whose middle has fallen in.
Did you know? The two collapse pits between the bridges measure roughly 300 to 522 metres around their rims.
04 Qutang Gorge
People's Republic of China · 4.4 km from Fengjie31.043° N 109.562° E
Liuxingy · CC BY-SA 4.0 Qutang is the shortest and the most dramatic of the Three Gorges of the Yangtze. In only about 8 km the great river forces its way between mountains whose walls rise as high as 1,200 metres, and at its narrowest point the channel is just 150 metres wide.
Did you know? Baidicheng takes its name from Gongsun Shu, who built the town in the late Western Han and proclaimed himself the White Emperor in AD 25.
05 Dazu Rock Carvings
People's Republic of China29.713° N 105.707° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Gwydion M. Williams from Coventry, Great Britain · CC BY 2.0 In the hills of Dazu, west of Chongqing, tens of thousands of figures look out from the rock: Buddhas, bodhisattvas, sages, demons, officials and ordinary people, cut into open cliff faces and shallow grottoes over some six centuries.
Did you know? Carving at Beishan began in 892 and continued through the Five Dynasties until 1146, a span of more than 250 years.
06 Furong Cave, Wulong
People's Republic of China29.229° N 107.903° E
Brookqi · Public domain Furong Cave opens from the steep bank of the Furong River in the gorge country of Wulong, south-east of Chongqing, and leads into a chamber-lined passage almost three kilometres long and in places 30 to 50 metres wide.
Did you know? The nearby Qikeng shaft, sometimes called the Steam Shaft, drops roughly 920 metres in a single plunge.
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 Chongqing?
- On our list, Three Gorges ranks first, followed by Xiaozhai Tiankeng and Three Natural Bridges.
- What is a tiankeng?
- Tiankeng, meaning heavenly pit in Chinese, is the term for an exceptionally large and deep collapse sinkhole with near-vertical walls, formed in thick limestone. Xiaozhai Tiankeng in Chongqing is one of the largest examples.
- Why are the Dazu Rock Carvings a World Heritage Site?
- The Dazu Rock Carvings were listed by UNESCO in 1999 for their artistic quality, wide range of subjects and the way they bring together Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, showing everyday life alongside religious scenes.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Chongqing?
- In our collection, the places in Chongqing are most often canyons and gorges (2), rock formations (1), natural arches (1) and caves (1).
- How many places are on this list in Chongqing?
- The list covers 6 places.