The Most Beautiful Places in New Zealand
37 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in New Zealand are Milford Sound / Piopiotahi, Aoraki / Mount Cook and Champagne Pool. The list covers 37 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
New Zealand sits on the boundary between the Pacific and Australian plates, and that restless edge shapes almost everything in its landscape. Movement along the Alpine Fault keeps lifting the Southern Alps, glaciers carved deep fiords and lake basins, and in the North Island the Taupō Volcanic Zone feeds volcanoes, geysers and hot pools. Long isolation also gave the islands forests and trees found nowhere else.
Aoraki / Mount Cook is the country's highest peak, rising above glaciers in the heart of the Southern Alps. On the west coast, Franz Josef Glacier descends from the mountains toward temperate rainforest, and in the far southwest Fiordland National Park is cut by glacial fiords, the most famous being Milford Sound, where Mitre Peak rises straight from the water. In the Mackenzie Basin, Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki take on an opaque turquoise from glacial flour, and Lake Wakatipu winds in a long zigzag beneath the mountains.
The North Island and the coasts bring other forms. Champagne Pool at Wai-O-Tapu is a hot spring rimmed in orange mineral deposits, its surface fizzing with carbon dioxide, and Whakaari / White Island is an active volcano rising from the Bay of Plenty. On an Otago beach, the Moeraki Boulders lie like giant marbles in the surf, Abel Tasman National Park lines golden bays with forest, and in Waipoua Forest Tāne Mahuta is the largest known living kauri tree.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Milford Sound / Piopiotahi | Fjord | |
| 2 | Aoraki / Mount Cook | Summit | |
| 3 | Champagne Pool | Hot spring | |
| 4 | Wharariki Beach | Beach | |
| 5 | Church of the Good Shepherd, Lake Tekapo | Church building | |
| 6 | Emerald Lakes | Volcanic crater lake | |
| 7 | Cathedral Cove | Beach | |
| 8 | Waitomo Glowworm Caves | Cave | |
| 9 | Franz Josef Glacier | Glacier | |
| 10 | Fiordland National Park | National park | ✓ |
| 11 | Lake Tekapo | Lake | |
| 12 | Lake Wakatipu | Lake | |
| 13 | Moeraki Boulders / Kaihinaki | Rock formation | |
| 14 | Whakaari / White Island | Island | |
| 15 | Abel Tasman National Park | National park | |
| 16 | Lake Pukaki | Lake | |
| 17 | Tane Mahuta | Remarkable tree | |
| 18 | Taranaki Maunga | Volcano | |
| 19 | Pancake Rocks | Rock formation | |
| 20 | Te Papa-Kura-o-Taranaki (Egmont National Park) | National park | |
| 21 | Nugget Point | Stack | |
| 22 | Sutherland Falls | Waterfall | |
| 23 | Doubtful Sound / Patea | Fjord | |
| 24 | Westland Tai Poutini National Park | National park | ✓ |
| 25 | Mitre Peak | Summit | |
| 26 | Castle Hill | Rock formation | |
| 27 | Dunedin railway station | Railway station | |
| 28 | Pōhutu Geyser | Geyser | |
| 29 | Ōpārara Arch | Natural arch | |
| 30 | Mount Ngauruhoe | Volcano |
01 Milford Sound / Piopiotahi
New Zealand44.617° S 167.867° E
W. Bulach · CC BY-SA 4.0 Milford Sound / Piopiotahi is a fiord in the far southwest of New Zealand's South Island, cut by glaciers into the mountains of Fiordland and running about 15 km inland from the Tasman Sea.
Did you know? Jim Dennistoun made the first ascent of Mitre Peak alone in 1911; doubters were silenced in 1914 when climbers found his handkerchief in a summit cairn.
02 Aoraki / Mount Cook
New Zealand43.595° S 170.142° E
Image by kewl from Pixabay Aoraki / Mount Cook, New Zealand's highest mountain, rises to 3,724 metres in the Southern Alps, the range that runs the length of the South Island. It has three summits in a long, almost level ridge, Low Peak, Middle Peak and High Peak, which give the mountain a distinctive blocky profile seen from east or west.
Did you know? Edmund Hillary made his first ascent in January 1948, and a month later joined the first climb of the South Ridge, renamed Hillary Ridge in 2011.
03 Champagne Pool
New Zealand · 27.4 km from Rotorua38.359° S 176.369° E
Image by alexandramorcos from Pixabay Champagne Pool is a hot spring in the Waiotapu geothermal field on New Zealand's North Island, and it is one of the most painted-looking natural objects on Earth.
Did you know? That microbe lives on the 'knallgas' reaction, combining hydrogen and oxygen into water, and grows best at about 70 °C.
04 Wharariki Beach
New Zealand40.504° S 172.674° E
Image by kiwibu from Pixabay Wharariki Beach lies at the very top of New Zealand's South Island, just west of Cape Farewell, where the land runs out and the Tasman Sea meets the open ocean with nothing to break its swell.
Did you know? The second Archway Island, about 150 metres offshore, is low and covered in vegetation, unlike the two bare rock stacks farther out.
05 Church of the Good Shepherd, Lake Tekapo
New Zealand44.003° S 170.482° E
Image by Holgi from Pixabay The Church of the Good Shepherd is a very small building with a very large view.
Did you know? The Murray family of Braemar Station gave the land, and neighbouring land was gifted too so that the church would stay alone on the shore.
06 Emerald Lakes
New Zealand · 21.3 km from Tūrangi39.134° S 175.654° E
Marcus Holland-Moritz · CC BY-SA 2.0 After hours of walking across grey ash, black lava and the rust-coloured slopes of Red Crater, the Emerald Lakes come as a shock of colour.
Did you know? Walkers first see the lakes as they begin their descent from the highest point of the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, at 1,886 metres.
07 Cathedral Cove
New Zealand · 39 km from Thames36.828° S 175.790° E
Image by 9500456 from Pixabay On the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula, at the end of a cliff-top walk from the village of Hahei, the headland between two small beaches has been pierced by the sea.
Did you know? Since protection began, snapper and crayfish have recovered inside the reserve, and as predators they keep sea urchin numbers in check.
08 Waitomo Glowworm Caves
New Zealand38.261° S 175.104° E
Karora · Public domain The Waitomo Glowworm Cave, officially just Waitomo Cave, is in the North Island of New Zealand. Its roof is lit by thousands of tiny blue-green lights. They are the larvae of Arachnocampa luminosa, a fungus gnat found only in New Zealand.
Did you know? Each larva can let down as many as 30 sticky silk threads, and when prey is caught it reels the line in by eating it.
09 Franz Josef Glacier
New Zealand43.475° S 170.200° E
Image by RobO100 from Pixabay Few glaciers anywhere come down as far or as fast as Franz Josef.
Did you know? A 1946 postage stamp showed the glacier framed by the altar window of St James Church; by 1954 the ice had vanished from that view, returning briefly in 1997.
10 Fiordland National Park
New Zealand45.386° S 167.347° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by Julius_Silver from Pixabay 2 million hectares of temperate rainforest and 14 fjords gouged out by glaciers that retreated long enough ago for forest to reclaim nearly every slope down to the waterline.
Did you know? The Milford Track was opened in 1889 by Quintin McKinnon and Donald Sutherland, and a 1908 article in The Spectator called it the finest walk in the world.
11 Lake Tekapo
New Zealand43.900° S 170.525° E
Image by Holgi from Pixabay Lake Tekapo lies at about 710 metres in the Mackenzie Basin of New Zealand's South Island, a long glacial trough roughly 27 kilometres from end to end and up to 6 kilometres across.
Did you know? The lake reaches about 120 metres at its deepest and holds roughly six cubic kilometres of water.
12 Lake Wakatipu
New Zealand · 14.7 km from Queenstown45.085° S 168.561° E
Jamie Wang · CC BY-SA 2.0 Lake Wakatipu fills a trough that a glacier gouged into the mountains of Central Otago during the last ice age, and it still has the shape of something carved rather than poured: a long, narrow body of water bent twice into a dog leg, 80 kilometres from end to end.
Did you know? One of the first Europeans to reach the lake in 1856 accidentally set off a large scrub fire by tossing away a match on the shore.
13 Moeraki Boulders / Kaihinaki
New Zealand · 29.4 km from Oamaru45.345° S 170.826° E
Image by Simon from Pixabay On Koekohe Beach, on the Otago coast of New Zealand's South Island, a scattering of grey stone spheres lies at the edge of the surf as if a game of giant marbles had been abandoned. Some sit alone, some in clusters; some are half buried in the sand, others have split open to show a hollow, crystal-lined heart.
Did you know? Similar but even bigger concretions, the Koutu Boulders on Hokianga Harbour in the North Island, reach about three metres across.
14 Whakaari / White Island
New Zealand37.520° S 177.183° E
Image by xiSerge from Pixabay Whakaari has been killing people on a schedule of roughly once a generation for over a century, and it was doing so long before the eruption that most people now associate with the island.
Did you know? James Cook named it White Island on 1 November 1769 because it always appeared white to his crew, probably from the dense clouds of steam around it.
15 Abel Tasman National Park
New Zealand40.900° S 172.971° E
Image by Ricardo_Helass from Pixabay Abel Tasman National Park is New Zealand's smallest national park, about 237 square kilometres of hills between Golden Bay and Tasman Bay at the top of the South Island, and one of the most visited. Its beauty is coastal: sandy beaches, headlands and estuaries backed by forested hills.
Did you know? The golden sand comes from weathered Cretaceous granite, whose coarse grains settle fast and help keep the water strikingly clear.
16 Lake Pukaki
New Zealand44.117° S 170.167° E
Image by Makalu from Pixabay Lake Pukaki is one of the three parallel glacial lakes of New Zealand's Mackenzie Basin, and its colour is the first thing anyone remembers: a milky, almost opaque powder blue, unlike the clear water of most lakes.
Did you know? Water from Lake Tekapo is diverted by canal into Pukaki, passing through the Tekapo B power station on Pukaki's eastern shore.
17 Tane Mahuta
New Zealand35.601° S 173.527° E
W. Bulach · CC BY-SA 4.0 Deep in the Waipoua Forest on New Zealand's Northland peninsula stands the largest kauri known to be alive. Tāne Mahuta – named after Tāne, the Māori god of forests and birds – is not the tallest tree in the world, but few living things carry such bulk.
Did you know? In April 2009 Tāne Mahuta was formally twinned with Jōmon Sugi, the ancient cedar on Japan's Yakushima island.
18 Taranaki Maunga
New Zealand · 26.7 km from New Plymouth39.296° S 174.065° E
Image by Browser from Pixabay Few mountains look so much like the idea of a volcano. Taranaki Maunga rises to 2,518 metres from the coastal farmland of New Zealand's west coast as an almost perfectly symmetrical cone, snow-capped for much of the year and standing entirely alone, with nothing of comparable height nearby.
Did you know? The first recorded European ascent came in 1839, when the whaler James Heberley reached the summit ahead of the naturalist Ernst Dieffenbach.
19 Pancake Rocks
New Zealand42.117° S 171.327° E
Image by Makalu from Pixabay On the wild West Coast of New Zealand's South Island, the headland of Dolomite Point looks as if it were built from stacks of giant grey pancakes.
Did you know? Two forces carve the headland together: rainwater slowly dissolving the limestone along cracks, and the sea undercutting caverns until they collapse.
20 Te Papa-Kura-o-Taranaki (Egmont National Park)
New Zealand · 23.5 km from New Plymouth39.267° S 174.100° E
Krzysztof Golik · CC BY-SA 4.0 Few mountains on Earth stand as alone as Taranaki.
Did you know? Taranaki's resemblance to Mount Fuji led filmmakers to use it as the backdrop for The Last Samurai (2003).
21 Nugget Point
New Zealand46.447° S 169.814° E
Noel Jhinku, aka Njhinku · CC BY 2.5 At the northern edge of the Catlins, a narrow ridge of land runs out into the Pacific and ends in a white lighthouse on a cliff top, with a scatter of dark rock stacks trailing into the sea beyond it. These islets are the "nuggets" that give the headland its English name; in Māori it is Tokatā.
Did you know? The stone tower itself is only about 9 metres tall; its great height above the sea comes entirely from the cliff beneath it.
22 Sutherland Falls
New Zealand44.800° S 167.730° E
rheins · CC BY 3.0 Sutherland Falls in the mountains of Fiordland is one of the tallest waterfalls in New Zealand, and one of the most graceful anywhere: a single white thread that drops about 580 metres from the lip of a hanging valley in three great leaps.
Did you know? Lake Quill is a glacial cirque tarn of about 1.2 square kilometres, lying at roughly 979 metres above sea level.
23 Doubtful Sound / Patea
New Zealand45.345° S 167.030° E
Image by holgerheinze0 from Pixabay Doubtful Sound / Patea is one of the grandest of the fiords that cut into the south-western edge of New Zealand's South Island: about 40 km long, up to 2 km wide and as much as 421 metres deep, it is the second longest and the deepest of them.
Did you know? The tannin-stained freshwater layer on the surface can be up to 10 metres thick, with salinity below a third of seawater.
24 Westland Tai Poutini National Park
New Zealand43.567° S 170.083° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by ThierryBEUVE from Pixabay Westland Tai Poutini National Park runs from the crest of the Southern Alps down to the Tasman Sea on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island, and within a short distance it goes from peaks over 3,000 m to lowland rainforest and coastal lagoons. The highest point is Mount Tasman at 3,498 m.
Did you know? Fox Glacier was renamed after New Zealand's premier William Fox following his visit in 1872.
25 Mitre Peak
New Zealand44.633° S 167.856° E
Image by Julius_Silver from Pixabay Mitre Peak is the mountain in the picture most people carry of New Zealand's fiords. It rises straight out of the water of Milford Sound, in Fiordland National Park on the south-west coast of the South Island, climbing close to 1,700 metres from sea level in a single sweep of rock.
Did you know? On the first ascent Dennistoun started climbing at 7:30 a.m., reached the top at 1:15 p.m., and got back to his boat at 9:45 p.m. in darkness and rain.
26 Castle Hill
New Zealand43.229° S 171.716° E
Michal Klajban · CC BY-SA 4.0 High in the Canterbury back country, where the road from Christchurch climbs towards Arthur's Pass, a grassy basin is scattered with hundreds of grey limestone boulders, some the size of houses.
Did you know? Stone from the Castle Hill area was used for the front of ChristChurch Cathedral.
27 Dunedin railway station
New Zealand · 1.8 km from Dunedin45.875° S 170.509° E
W. Bulach · CC BY-SA 4.0 Dunedin's railway station looks like a town hall from Flanders that took a wrong turn and landed in the far south of New Zealand.
Did you know? When work on the Port Chalmers line began in 1870, the contractor marked the moment by breaking a bottle of wine over the first wheelbarrow.
28 Pōhutu Geyser
New Zealand · 3.6 km from Rotorua38.164° S 176.254° E
Image by Makalu from Pixabay Pōhutu is the largest active geyser in the Southern Hemisphere and the centrepiece of Te Whakarewarewa, the geothermal valley on the southern edge of Rotorua.
Did you know? The valley holds at least 65 geyser vents, most of them now dormant, and its pools are mostly alkaline chloride hot springs.
29 Ōpārara Arch
New Zealand41.145° S 172.188° E
Stewart Nimmo · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Ōpārara River runs straight through a hill of limestone in the rainforest of the northwest South Island of New Zealand, and the tunnel it has carved is big enough to hold a multi-storey building.
Did you know? An old sign at the end of the track gave the arch as 200 m long, 49 m wide and 37 m high, well short of later official measurements.
30 Mount Ngauruhoe
New Zealand · 24.4 km from Tūrangi39.157° S 175.632° E
Image by BKD from Pixabay Mount Ngauruhoe is the volcano a child would draw: an almost perfectly symmetrical cone of dark scoria and ash, rising to 2,291 metres in the heart of New Zealand's North Island.
Did you know? Technically Ngauruhoe is a parasitic cone, the youngest vent of the Tongariro volcano rather than a separate mountain.
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 New Zealand?
- On our list, Milford Sound / Piopiotahi ranks first, followed by Aoraki / Mount Cook and Champagne Pool.
- Why are Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki so blue?
- Both lakes are fed by glaciers that grind rock into extremely fine particles called glacial flour. The particles stay suspended in the water and scatter light, giving the lakes their milky turquoise colour.
- How were the Moeraki Boulders formed?
- The boulders are concretions that grew in seafloor mud tens of millions of years ago, as minerals cemented sediment around a core. Coastal erosion of the soft mudstone has gradually exposed them on the beach.
- Is Milford Sound a sound or a fiord?
- Despite its name, Milford Sound is a fiord, a valley carved by glaciers and later flooded by the sea. A true sound is a river valley flooded by the sea.
- What kinds of places are there to see in New Zealand?
- In our collection, the places in New Zealand are most often rock formations (6), lakes (5), national parks (5) and nature sanctuaries (5).
- How many places are on this list in New Zealand?
- The list covers 37 places.