The Most Beautiful Places in Ontario
6 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Ontario are Niagara Falls, CN Tower and Library of Parliament (Ottawa). The list covers 6 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Ontario is shaped by water. It borders four of the Great Lakes, and the Niagara River, falling from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, makes one of the most famous waterfalls on Earth. That same water power helped build the province in the early twentieth century, while the capital Ottawa and the city of Toronto gave it landmarks of government and modern engineering.
Niagara Falls is the province's natural centrepiece, and its Horseshoe Falls carries most of the river's flow in a great curving drop. Along the river, the early power stations were built as palaces of industry: the Toronto Power Generating Station in a Beaux-Arts style with columns and stone facades, and the Niagara Parks Power Station, whose generator hall now stands as a monument to that age.
In Ottawa, the Library of Parliament is a round Gothic Revival hall of carved wood and stone that survived the fire of 1916 which destroyed the rest of the Centre Block. Below Parliament Hill, the Ottawa Locks lift boats in a flight of eight steps from the Ottawa River to the Rideau Canal. In Toronto, the CN Tower rises 553 metres above the lakeshore.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Niagara Falls | Waterfall | |
| 2 | CN Tower | Observation tower | |
| 3 | Library of Parliament (Ottawa) | Library building | |
| 4 | Toronto Power Generating Station | Hydroelectric power station | |
| 5 | Niagara Parks Power Station | Hydroelectric power station | |
| 6 | Ottawa Locks | Lock |
01 Niagara Falls
Canada · 3.2 km from Niagara Falls43.080° N 79.071° W
Image by NeilMorrell from Pixabay Niagara Falls hasn't stayed in one place. When the ice sheets retreated around 12,000 years ago and Lake Erie's outflow first cut through the Niagara Escarpment, the falls formed roughly 11 kilometres downstream from where they stand today, near what's now Lewiston and Queenston.
Did you know? Between half and three-quarters of the Niagara River is diverted through tunnels to hydroelectric plants before it ever reaches the brink.
02 CN Tower
Canada · 2.4 km from Toronto43.643° N 79.387° W
Image by jameswheeler from Pixabay Toronto's skyline is organised around a single concrete needle. 3 metres from the old Railway Lands south of Front Street, and for 32 years, from 1975 to 2007, nothing freestanding anywhere on Earth stood taller.
Did you know? Its emergency metal staircase has 1,776 steps to the main deck and 2,579 to The Top, making it the tallest metal staircase on Earth.
03 Library of Parliament (Ottawa)
Library of Parliament
Canada · 0.8 km from Ottawa45.426° N 75.700° W
Image by Pet_orient from Pixabay The round, many-buttressed building tucked behind the Centre Block on Parliament Hill is the one part of Canada's original parliament that survived the fire of 1916 — and it survived because of a closed door.
Did you know? In 1888 a tornado stripped the slate shingles from its roof; the timber-and-slate roof was later rebuilt with steel and copper.
04 Toronto Power Generating Station
Canada · 3.9 km from Niagara Falls43.072° N 79.074° W
Mike Garrett from Canada · CC BY 2.0 Standing on the bank of the Niagara River just above the falls, the Toronto Power Generating Station looks more like a museum of antiquities or a state bank than a place where water was turned into electricity. That was the point. The Toronto architect E. J.
Did you know? Behind the grand riverside front, the east facade is plain terracotta brick with shallow pilasters, keeping the show for the side the public saw.
05 Niagara Parks Power Station
Rankine Generating Station
Canada · 4.1 km from Niagara Falls43.075° N 79.079° W
Antony-22 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Just upstream of the Horseshoe Falls, on the Canadian bank of the Niagara River, stands one of the most beautiful industrial buildings in North America: a long Beaux-Arts power house that looks more like a grand public building than a machine.
Did you know? Each of its eleven generators was rated at 8,320 kVA, giving the station a combined capacity of roughly 100 MVA.
06 Ottawa Locks
Canada · 0.9 km from Ottawa45.425° N 75.696° W
Image by pcowan5188 from Pixabay The Rideau Canal begins with its most dramatic flourish: eight locks climbing one after another out of the Ottawa River, a stone staircase set into a ravine between Parliament Hill and the Château Laurier.
Did you know? The first full steamboat passage ended at Bytown on 29 May 1832, when the steamer Rideau arrived from Kingston with Colonel By and his family aboard.
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 Ontario?
- On our list, Niagara Falls ranks first, followed by CN Tower and Library of Parliament (Ottawa).
- What is the difference between the Horseshoe Falls and the American Falls?
- The Horseshoe Falls is the larger, curved waterfall on the Canadian side and carries most of the Niagara River's water. The American Falls and the smaller Bridal Veil Falls lie on the US side.
- Why is the Rideau Canal a World Heritage Site?
- The Rideau Canal, opened in 1832, is one of the best-preserved slackwater canals in North America from the early nineteenth century and is still in use with many of its original locks. It was inscribed by UNESCO in 2007.
- Was the CN Tower ever the tallest structure in the world?
- Yes. After its completion in 1976, the CN Tower was the world's tallest free-standing structure for more than thirty years, until it was surpassed by the Burj Khalifa.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Ontario?
- In our collection, the places in Ontario are most often hydroelectric power stations (2), waterfalls (1), canal locks (1) and viewpoints (1).
- How many places are on this list in Ontario?
- The list covers 6 places.