The Most Beautiful Places in Otago
5 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Otago are Lake Wakatipu, Moeraki Boulders / Kaihinaki and Nugget Point. The list covers 5 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Otago runs from the Southern Alps to the Pacific, and few regions of New Zealand change so completely across a single drive. In the west, glaciers carved deep lakes such as Wakatipu and Wānaka into schist mountains; in the centre lie dry basins and tussock ranges; on the east coast, sandstone and volcanic rock meet a cold, wild sea. The 1860s gold rush brought settlers, many of them Scottish, and left Dunedin with a stone-built Victorian centre unlike any other city in the country.
Lake Wakatipu is a long, narrow glacial lake shaped like a lightning bolt, with Queenstown on its shore and the Remarkables rising above it. On Wānaka's shore, a single willow growing out of the water has become one of the most photographed trees anywhere, especially at dawn when the lake is still.
The coast is just as distinctive. On Koekohe Beach the Moeraki Boulders, large spherical concretions formed in ancient seabed mud, lie scattered on the sand as the cliffs behind them erode. Further south, at the edge of the Catlins, Nugget Point ends in a line of rocky stacks below a lighthouse lit in 1870. In Dunedin itself, the railway station designed by George Troup and opened in 1906 is a Flemish Renaissance building of dark basalt and pale limestone, with a mosaic floor inside.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lake Wakatipu | Lake | |
| 2 | Moeraki Boulders / Kaihinaki | Rock formation | |
| 3 | Nugget Point | Stack | |
| 4 | Dunedin railway station | Railway station | |
| 5 | That Wānaka Tree | Remarkable tree |
01 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.
02 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.
03 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.
04 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.
05 That Wānaka Tree
New Zealand · 2.2 km from Wanaka44.698° S 169.117° E
Image by ArnaudMalanPhotography from Pixabay It began life as a fence post. Sometime before 1939 a length of crack willow was driven into the shallows of Roys Bay, at the southern end of Lake Wānaka, to stop livestock from the neighbouring Wānaka Station wandering along the shore.
Did you know? Even the register's girth and crown measurements were taken from scaled photographs rather than by hand, to avoid disturbing a tree people are asked to keep away from.
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 Otago?
- On our list, Lake Wakatipu ranks first, followed by Moeraki Boulders / Kaihinaki and Nugget Point.
- How were the Moeraki Boulders formed?
- The Moeraki Boulders are concretions that grew within seabed mudstone millions of years ago, as minerals cemented the sediment around a core. Coastal erosion of the cliffs behind Koekohe Beach gradually releases them onto the shore.
- What is That Wānaka Tree?
- It is a crack willow growing in the shallows at the southern end of Lake Wānaka, believed to have started as part of an old fence line. Its isolated position in the water has made it a well-known subject for landscape photographers.
- Why is Dunedin railway station called Gingerbread George?
- The nickname refers to its architect, George Troup, and to the building's ornate, decorated exterior in contrasting dark and light stone. The station opened in 1906 and is one of the best-known buildings in New Zealand.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Otago?
- In our collection, the places in Otago are most often rock formations (1), lakes (1), sea stacks (1) and trees (1).
- How many places are on this list in Otago?
- The list covers 5 places.