The Most Beautiful Places in Peru
28 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Peru are Machu Picchu, Vinicunca (Rainbow Mountain) and Maras Salt Pans. The list covers 28 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Peru packs a startling range of landscapes into one country: a coastal desert among the driest on Earth, the high Andes with dozens of glaciated peaks, and the Amazon basin beyond. Each zone fostered its own civilisation. The dry coast preserved the work of the Nazca, Paracas and Chimú peoples, while in the mountains the Inca built an empire with stonework so precise that blocks fit together without mortar.
The Nazca Lines are vast figures and straight lines scraped into the desert floor, including a hummingbird and a monkey best seen from the air. On a hillside above the Bay of Paracas, the Candelabra is etched into the sand facing the sea. Chan Chan, the Chimú capital near Trujillo, was the largest adobe city of the pre-Columbian Americas, its walls decorated with reliefs of fish and birds. By Lake Umayo, the funerary towers of Sillustani stand on a peninsula high on the Altiplano.
The Inca heartland around Cusco holds the giant zigzag walls of Sacsayhuamán and Coricancha, the Temple of the Sun, whose stone foundations carry a colonial Dominican church. Machu Picchu, built in the fifteenth century on a ridge above the Urubamba, is the most famous Inca site of all. The mountains themselves rival the ruins: the Colca Canyon, where condors ride the thermals, the ice pyramid of Alpamayo and the peaks of Huascarán National Park in the Cordillera Blanca, and Vinicunca, striped in bands of coloured mineral sediment. On the coast, the oasis of Huacachina sits among towering dunes.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Machu Picchu | Archaeological site | |
| 2 | Vinicunca (Rainbow Mountain) | Mountain | |
| 3 | Maras Salt Pans | Terraced fields | |
| 4 | Laguna 69 | Lake | |
| 5 | Huacachina | Oasis | |
| 6 | Santa Catalina Monastery, Arequipa | Monastery | |
| 7 | Gocta Cataracts | Waterfall | |
| 8 | Colca Canyon | Canyon | |
| 9 | Nazca Lines | Geoglyph | ✓ |
| 10 | Sacsayhuamán | Archaeological site | |
| 11 | Sillustani | Necropolis | |
| 12 | Chan Chan | Archaeological site | ✓ |
| 13 | Huascarán National Park | National park | ✓ |
| 14 | Paracas Candelabra | Geoglyph | |
| 15 | Alpamayo | Summit | |
| 16 | Coricancha | Temple | |
| 17 | Kuélap | Fortress | |
| 18 | Moray | Terraced fields | |
| 19 | Huaca de la Luna | Archaeological site | |
| 20 | Pisac Archeological Park | Archaeological site | |
| 21 | Q'eswachaka Bridge | Bridge | |
| 22 | Choquequirao | Archaeological site | |
| 23 | Sarcophagi of Karajía | Necropolis | |
| 24 | Revash | Necropolis | |
| 25 | Iglesia de San Pedro, Andahuaylillas | Church building | |
| 26 | Huayllay Stone Forest | Rock formation | |
| 27 | Humantay Lake | Lake | |
| 28 | Parque archeologico national Ollantaytambo | Archaeological site |
01 Machu Picchu
Peru13.163° S 72.546° W
Draceane · CC BY-SA 4.0 Machu Picchu sits on a narrow saddle between two peaks in the Andes above the Urubamba River, which loops around the site on three sides at the foot of cliffs some 450 metres high.
Did you know? Hiram Bingham shipped thousands of artefacts, from ceramics to silver figurines and human bones, to Yale University, which returned the last of them in 2012.
02 Vinicunca (Rainbow Mountain)
Vinicunca
Peru13.870° S 71.303° W
Image by jerzykwpodrozy from Pixabay Vinicunca, better known as the Rainbow Mountain or Montaña de Siete Colores, is a ridge in the Andes of southern Peru whose slopes are painted in parallel bands of colour.
Did you know? The 2015 mining petition, filed by a subsidiary of a Canadian company, covered 400 hectares, the entire mountain and lands of the Chillihuani and Pampachiri communities.
03 Maras Salt Pans
Salineras de Maras
Peru · 4.2 km from Urubamba13.302° S 72.155° W
Image by jdbenthien from Pixabay On a steep slope in the Peruvian Andes, about 3,200 metres above the sea, some 4,500 small pools step down the side of a ravine like a honeycomb poured over the hill. These are the salt pans of Maras.
Did you know? Each pool is filled, left to evaporate and scraped roughly once a month, so successive layers of salt build up through the dry season.
04 Laguna 69
Peru9.010° S 77.612° W
Christian Cruzado · CC BY 2.0 High in Peru's Cordillera Blanca, at roughly 4,600 metres, Laguna 69 fills a rocky cirque beneath the ice-hung walls of Chacraraju. Its water is a vivid turquoise, a colour owed to minerals carried down in glacial meltwater, and in the thaw season a waterfall pours from the mountain straight into the lake.
Did you know? Laguna 69 sits in the upper reaches of the Demanda ravine, one of more than 400 lakes counted inside Huascarán National Park.
05 Huacachina
Peru · 4.6 km from Ica14.088° S 75.763° W
Gatol fotografia from La Paz, Bolivia · CC BY-SA 2.0 Huacachina is the oasis that looks like an illustration of the word: a small green lagoon fringed with palm trees, a ring of low buildings around its shore, and on every side immense, wind-sculpted dunes of the Ica desert rising far above the rooftops.
Did you know? Besides palms, the oasis is shaded by huarango trees, a native mesquite that gives resting places to migratory birds crossing the desert.
06 Santa Catalina Monastery, Arequipa
Monasterio de Santa Catalina de Siena
Peru · 2.6 km from Arequipa16.395° S 71.537° W
Image by LoggaWiggler from Pixabay The Monastery of Santa Catalina de Siena in Arequipa is a convent that grew into a small walled city. Founded in 1579 by the wealthy widow María de Guzmán, it covers some 20,000 square metres in the heart of Arequipa, enclosed by four-metre walls.
Did you know? The communal kitchen has an unusually high domed ceiling, which has led some experts to suggest it was built, or meant, to serve as a chapel.
07 Gocta Cataracts
Gocta
Peru · 22.9 km from Chachapoyas6.023° S 77.887° W
Draceane · CC BY-SA 4.0 Gocta falls in two long white ribbons down a sheer wall of the cloud forest in northern Peru, with a combined height of about 771 metres. The upper cascade drops some 231 metres to a ledge; the lower one, around 540 metres, plunges from the lip of that ledge to the valley of the Cocahuayco river.
Did you know? According to local tradition, a man named Juan Mendoza vanished after being enchanted by the rocks behind the falls.
08 Colca Canyon
Valle del Colca
Peru15.597° S 72.056° W
Image by pvdberg from Pixabay The Colca Canyon cuts through the volcanic highlands of southern Peru for around a hundred kilometres, and in places the land drops more than three thousand metres from the surrounding peaks to the river.
Did you know? The Incas are thought to have arrived around 1320 and secured the valley through marriage alliances rather than war.
09 Nazca Lines
Líneas de Nazca
Peru · 25.6 km from Nasca14.697° S 75.135° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by monikawl999 from Pixabay Maria Reiche, a German mathematician, spent roughly forty years on foot in the Peruvian desert measuring, mapping and defending the Nazca Lines from a rented broom cupboard of a house nearby, and it was her work that popularized the idea that the lines formed a giant celestial calendar — tracking solstices, marking the…
Did you know? More than 70 of the figures depict animals, including a spider, fish, heron, lizard, dog and cat, alongside a human figure.
10 Sacsayhuamán
Saqsaywaman
Peru · 2.2 km from Cuzco13.508° S 71.982° W
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0 Sacsayhuamán is the great Inca stronghold on the hill that rises above the northern edge of Cusco, at about 3,700 m.
Did you know? The three terrace walls are estimated to contain more than 6,000 cubic metres of stone.
11 Sillustani
Peru · 18.2 km from Puno15.721° S 70.158° W
Unukorno · CC BY 3.0 On the grassy slopes above Lake Umayo, high on the Peruvian Altiplano, stand the stone burial towers of Sillustani.
Did you know? Many of the towers widen as they rise, so that they are broader at the top than at the base, like inverted cones.
12 Chan Chan
Peru · 6.2 km from Trujillo8.111° S 79.075° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Bernard Gagnon · CC BY-SA 3.0 Chan Chan is a city made of earth. On the desert coast of northern Peru, in the Moche Valley, the capital of the Chimú kingdom spread across some 20 square kilometres, and it is regarded as the largest adobe-built city in the Americas.
Did you know? No compounds open to the north, the sunniest side, while the tallest walls shelter the city from south-westerly winds off the Pacific.
13 Huascarán National Park
Parque nacional Huascarán
Peru · 20.3 km from Huaraz9.400° S 77.400° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by vincecroos from Pixabay Huascarán National Park protects almost the whole of the Cordillera Blanca, the highest tropical mountain range on Earth, a wall of ice-capped peaks running some 150 km along the central Andes of Peru.
Did you know? Huascarán Sur was first climbed on 20 July 1932 by a German-Austrian expedition; the lower north summit had been reached in 1908 by a party including Annie Smith Peck.
14 Paracas Candelabra
Candelabro de Paracas
Peru · 13.4 km from Pisco13.794° S 76.309° W
Alex Zanuccoli · CC BY-SA 2.0 The Paracas Candelabra is a colossal figure drawn on the sandy northern slope of the Paracas Peninsula, facing Pisco Bay on the southern coast of Peru. It looks like a three-branched candlestick, or a trident, which is why it also goes by the names El Candelabro, Tridente and Tres Cruces.
Did you know? According to local legend, the trident is the lightning rod of the creator god Viracocha.
15 Alpamayo
Peru8.879° S 77.653° W
Frank R 1981 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Alpamayo owes its fame to one side of it. Seen from the south-west, the 5,947-metre peak in Peru's Cordillera Blanca is a near-symmetrical wall of ice, its face scored top to bottom by parallel flutings that catch the light like pleats in fabric.
Did you know? The famous 1966 poll grew out of a photo contest by the German magazine Alpinismus to choose the ten most beautiful mountains in the world.
16 Coricancha
Peru · 0.7 km from Cuzco13.520° S 71.976° W
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0 At Coricancha the Inca and the Spanish worlds are literally built one on top of the other. The lower walls are Inca ashlar — grey andesite and other hard stone cut into blocks that fit so tightly no mortar was needed — and above and around them rise the church and convent of Santo Domingo.
Did you know? Spanish accounts describe a courtyard garden of life-size maize plants, birds and vicuñas made of gold and silver.
17 Kuélap
Peru · 21.6 km from Chachapoyas6.418° S 77.923° W
Elemaki · CC BY-SA 2.5 Kuélap rides the crest of a limestone ridge at about 3,000 metres above the Utcubamba valley in the cloud-forest country of northern Peru. It was built by the Chachapoya, a people who lived in these steep, wet Andean valleys long before the Inca reached them.
Did you know? Archaeologists have found ceremonial remains in the cone-shaped El Tintero, and one theory holds that it served as a solar observatory.
18 Moray
Peru · 9.1 km from Urubamba13.329° S 72.196° W
Image by JustinW from Pixabay Moray looks decorative from above — a series of perfect concentric rings sunk into a natural depression in the Andean plateau — but it was built to measure something.
Did you know? Some estimates suggest the stepped rings could mimic as many as twenty distinct microclimates within a single sinkhole.
19 Huaca de la Luna
Peru · 3.6 km from Trujillo8.135° S 78.991° W
Burkhard Mücke · CC BY-SA 4.0 Behind a plain-looking mound of mud brick at the foot of Cerro Blanco, the Huaca de la Luna hides some of the most vivid painted walls of the ancient Americas: tier after tier of red, white, yellow and black reliefs, among them the staring, fanged face of the deity usually called Ai Apaec, rows of warriors and lines of…
Did you know? Most of the war-captive victims died from a heavy blow to the head, and their bodies were thrown down from the temple and left unburied.
20 Pisac Archeological Park
Písac
Peru · 19 km from Cuzco13.409° S 71.843° W
PsamatheM · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Inca complex at Pisac spreads for about a kilometre along a high mountain ridge above the Sacred Valley of the Urubamba, at the entrance to the valley from the Cusco side.
Did you know? Inca engineers widened a natural crack in the rock into a 16-metre tunnel so narrow that people must pass through it in single file.
21 Q'eswachaka Bridge
Puente Queshuachaca
Peru · 29.2 km from Sicuani14.381° S 71.484° W
Aga Khan (IT) · CC BY-SA 4.0 Q'eswachaka, often written Queshuachaca, is the last Inca rope bridge still in use: a suspension bridge made entirely of grass, slung across the gorge of the Apurímac River near Huinchiri in the highlands of Canas province, south of Cusco. Its name in Cusco Quechua means simply "straw-rope bridge".
Did you know? Inca rope bridges were built for walkers, llamas and relay runners, because the Inca used no wheeled transport on their roads.
22 Choquequirao
Peru · 27.2 km from Abancay13.395° S 72.872° W
Bryan Dougherty (bryand_nyc) from New York City, USA · CC BY-SA 2.0 Choquequirao sits on a spur above the canyon of the Apurímac River, at about 3,050 m, with the river some 1,600 m below. It is one of the most dramatic sites the Incas built, and one of the least visited, because for now the only way in is on foot.
Did you know? The Giant Stairway, 25 metres long and 4.4 metres wide, ends abruptly partway down the hill; its boulders light up fully at the December solstice sunrise.
23 Sarcophagi of Karajía
Sarcófagos de Karajía
Peru · 18.3 km from Chachapoyas6.162° S 78.021° W
Draceane · CC BY-SA 4.0 High on a sheer cliff above a ravine in the mountains of northern Peru, a row of tall clay figures stands looking out over the valley. 5 metres high, each with a long face and a jutting, exaggerated jaw.
Did you know? Chachapoya purunmachus often carry a second, smaller head modelled on top of the main clay head.
24 Revash
Mausoleos de Revash
Peru · 34.4 km from Chachapoyas6.541° S 77.856° W
EdsonFuentesMera · CC BY-SA 4.0 High on a limestone cliff above the Utcubamba valley in northern Peru, a row of small painted houses clings to a ledge as if a village had been shrunk and tucked into the rock. They are tombs.
Did you know? Small ochre paintings of animals and human figures also mark the cliff around the mausoleums.
25 Iglesia de San Pedro, Andahuaylillas
Iglesia de San Pedro (Andahuaylillas)
Peru · 35.9 km from Cuzco13.674° S 71.678° W
Szacsa82 · CC BY-SA 4.0 From the outside, the church of San Pedro Apóstol in Andahuaylillas looks almost plain: a whitewashed adobe building raised on a stone platform above a wide plaza shaded by old pisonay trees, with a square bell tower and an open balcony chapel on its façade.
Did you know? Under Juan Pérez Bocanegra the parish was one of two centres in the archdiocese of Cusco for translating Christian texts into indigenous languages, the other being at Juli.
26 Huayllay Stone Forest
Bosque de Piedras de Huayllay
Peru · 35.9 km from Cerro de Pasco11.000° S 76.366° W
Jomel Contreras Espinoza · CC BY-SA 4.0 High on the Bombón plateau in Peru's central Andes, at more than 4,000 metres above sea level, thousands of eroded rock towers rise from the cold grassland of the puna.
Did you know? Among the named figures are a zebra, penguins, a snail, a bear, a toad and a cobra, alongside human profiles such as the thinker.
27 Humantay Lake
Laguna Humantay
Peru13.379° S 72.585° W
Draceane · CC BY-SA 4.0 At about 4,200 metres, at the foot of the glaciated peak of Humantay in Peru's Cordillera Vilcabamba, a small lake of startling turquoise fills a hollow below the ice.
Did you know? The name Humantay is usually linked to the Quechua huma, "head", though the meaning of the rest of the word is uncertain.
28 Parque archeologico national Ollantaytambo
Ollantaytambo
Peru · 17.1 km from Urubamba13.256° S 72.266° W
EdsonFuentesMera · CC BY-SA 4.0 Ollantaytambo is an Inca town and temple complex in the Sacred Valley, on the old Inca road towards Machu Picchu.
Did you know? Only three years after his defeat here, in 1540, the native population of Ollantaytambo was granted in encomienda to Hernando Pizarro himself.
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 Peru?
- On our list, Machu Picchu ranks first, followed by Vinicunca (Rainbow Mountain) and Maras Salt Pans.
- How old are the Nazca Lines?
- Most of the Nazca Lines were made by the Nazca culture between roughly 500 BC and AD 500. They were created by removing the reddish surface stones to expose lighter ground beneath, and the dry, windless climate has preserved them.
- Who built Machu Picchu?
- Machu Picchu was built by the Inca in the mid-fifteenth century, most likely as a royal estate for the emperor Pachacuti. It came to international attention after Hiram Bingham's visit in 1911.
- Why is Rainbow Mountain striped?
- Vinicunca is made of layers of sediment rich in different minerals, such as iron oxides that give red tones and other compounds that give yellow and green. Uplift and erosion have exposed the layers as bands across the slope.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Peru?
- In our collection, the places in Peru are most often archaeological sites (9), necropolises (3), lakes (2) and geoglyphs (2).
- How many places are on this list in Peru?
- The list covers 28 places.