The Most Beautiful Places in Southland
5 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Southland are Milford Sound / Piopiotahi, Fiordland National Park and Sutherland Falls. The list covers 5 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Southland is New Zealand's southernmost region, and its western half is Fiordland, a wilderness of hard granite and gneiss carved by glaciers during the ice ages. When the ice retreated, the sea flooded the deep valleys it had cut, leaving fiords with near-vertical walls that rise from dark water straight into rainforest and snow. Heavy rainfall from the Tasman Sea feeds countless waterfalls, and much of the land has no roads at all.
Milford Sound / Piopiotahi is the best known of the fiords, and Mitre Peak is its emblem, a sharp summit rising from the water's edge to well over a thousand metres. Fiordland National Park, the largest in the country, protects the whole region and forms part of the Te Wāhipounamu World Heritage Site. Inland from Milford, Sutherland Falls drops in three tiers from a mountain lake and is among the tallest waterfalls in New Zealand.
Doubtful Sound / Patea is longer, more branched and far quieter than Milford, a maze of arms and islands. Captain Cook named it in 1770 when he doubted that his ship could sail out again if he entered. Together these places show Fiordland in its different moods: towering peaks, falling water and still, enclosed sea.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Milford Sound / Piopiotahi | Fjord | |
| 2 | Fiordland National Park | National park | ✓ |
| 3 | Sutherland Falls | Waterfall | |
| 4 | Doubtful Sound / Patea | Fjord | |
| 5 | Mitre Peak | Summit |
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 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.
03 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.
04 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.
05 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.
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 Southland?
- On our list, Milford Sound / Piopiotahi ranks first, followed by Fiordland National Park and Sutherland Falls.
- Is Milford Sound a fjord or a sound?
- Despite its name, Milford Sound is a fiord: a glacial valley flooded by the sea. A true sound is a river valley flooded by the sea, so the names given by early European visitors are geologically inaccurate.
- How was Doubtful Sound named?
- Captain James Cook passed its entrance in 1770 and called it Doubtful Harbour because he was unsure whether the winds would let his ship sail back out.
- What is Te Wāhipounamu?
- Te Wāhipounamu is a UNESCO World Heritage Area in the southwest of the South Island. It combines Fiordland, Mount Aspiring, Aoraki/Mount Cook and Westland Tai Poutini national parks.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Southland?
- In our collection, the places in Southland are most often fjords (2), summits (1), waterfalls (1) and national parks (1).
- How many places are on this list in Southland?
- The list covers 5 places.