The Most Beautiful Places in Oaxaca
5 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Oaxaca are Monte Albán, Mitla and Árbol del Tule. The list covers 5 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Oaxaca is the most mountainous and one of the most culturally diverse states of Mexico, a knot of ranges and valleys where many indigenous languages are still spoken. The Central Valleys were home to the Zapotec civilization for well over two thousand years, and the Mixtec added their own traditions later. Colonial Dominican friars then left churches of exceptional richness, so ancient cities, baroque gold and strange natural formations all lie within a short distance of the state capital.
Monte Albán, the Zapotec capital, was built on a mountaintop that was levelled to hold its great plaza, temples and ball court, with views over three valleys. Mitla is known for something different: walls covered in geometric stone fretwork made of thousands of cut pieces fitted without mortar. In the city of Oaxaca, the church of Santo Domingo de Guzmán hides behind a sober facade an interior covered in gilded and painted stucco.
Nature is just as distinctive. The Árbol del Tule, a Montezuma cypress in the town of Santa María del Tule, has the stoutest trunk of any known tree. In the mountains to the east, Hierve el Agua shows what look like frozen waterfalls: cliffs coated in white mineral deposits left by springs, with natural pools at their edge.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Monte Albán | Archaeological site | ✓ |
| 2 | Mitla | Archaeological site | |
| 3 | Árbol del Tule | Remarkable tree | |
| 4 | Santo Domingo de Guzmán, Oaxaca | Church building | |
| 5 | Hierve el Agua | Rock formation |
01 Monte Albán
Mexico · 11.3 km from Oaxaca de Juárez17.044° N 96.768° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
ENDS2306 · CC BY-SA 3.0 Monte Albán sits on an artificially levelled ridge about 400 metres above the floor of the Valley of Oaxaca, at the point where the valley's three arms meet. From its Main Plaza, some 300 by 150 metres, the view takes in all of them, and Oaxaca City lies about 9 km to the east.
Did you know? A neighbourhood of ethnic Zapotecs has been identified in Teotihuacan, the great city of central Mexico.
02 Mitla
Mexico · 0 km from Mitla16.917° N 96.400° W
User:Gengiskanhg · CC BY-SA 3.0 Mitla is unlike any other ancient site in Mexico because of its walls: long friezes of geometric fretwork, known as grecas, made of thousands of small cut and polished stones fitted together without mortar into stepped spirals, zigzags and meanders.
Did you know? The stone fretwork was originally set against a background of red stucco, so the patterns stood out in light and colour.
03 Árbol del Tule
Mexico · 5.4 km from Oaxaca de Juárez17.047° N 96.636° W
Image by 12019 from Pixabay El Árbol del Tule is a Montezuma cypress — an ahuehuete, "old man of the water" in Nahuatl — growing in the churchyard of Santa María del Tule, a small town in the valley of Oaxaca. 4 metres is wider than that of the largest giant sequoia. 4 metres.
Did you know? Another legend says that leaders of great nations parted towards the four cardinal points, each planting an ahuehuete, and the Tule tree is one of them.
04 Santo Domingo de Guzmán, Oaxaca
Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán
Mexico · 6 km from Oaxaca de Juárez17.066° N 96.723° W
nan palmero · CC BY 2.0 Santo Domingo de Guzmán is the great set piece of Oaxaca, the colonial capital of a southern Mexican state. The church closes the northern end of the town's pedestrian street, its stone facade between two stout bell towers rising above a broad plaza; at sunset the whole front glows.
Did you know? It was President Porfirio Díaz who handed the church back to the Catholic Church in 1902, after decades of military use.
05 Hierve el Agua
Mexico · 14.4 km from Mitla16.866° N 96.276° W
Image by Javs_CDMX from Pixabay High in the dry hills east of the Oaxaca valley, two pale cliffs appear to be frozen in the act of pouring.
Did you know? Traces of other minerals such as iron, barium and silver in the water give individual stone 'stalactites' their own tints within the white mass.
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 Oaxaca?
- On our list, Monte Albán ranks first, followed by Mitla and Árbol del Tule.
- Who built Monte Albán?
- Monte Albán was built by the Zapotec people and served as their main political centre for over a thousand years. It was founded around 500 BC on a hill overlooking the Valley of Oaxaca.
- How old is the Árbol del Tule?
- Estimates vary widely, but the tree is commonly thought to be well over a thousand years old. It is famous above all for its trunk, the widest of any known tree.
- What are the petrified waterfalls at Hierve el Agua?
- They are not waterfalls but cliff faces covered in mineral deposits, mostly calcium carbonate, left by spring water running over the edge over thousands of years.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Oaxaca?
- In our collection, the places in Oaxaca are most often archaeological sites (2), rock formations (1), waterfalls (1) and trees (1).
- How many places are on this list in Oaxaca?
- The list covers 5 places.