The Most Beautiful Places in Vietnam
16 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Vietnam are Ha Long Bay, Imperial City of Hue and Son Doong Cave. The list covers 16 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Vietnam's most famous landscapes are made of limestone. Over millions of years, tropical rain dissolved great plateaus of it into towers, drowned islands and some of the largest caves on Earth, from Ha Long Bay in the north to the mountains of Phong Nha. Along the long coast and its river valleys, a mix of cultures left their mark: the Hindu kingdom of Champa, the Vietnamese imperial dynasties, Japanese and Chinese traders, French Catholic missions. The result is a country where karst scenery and courtly architecture are equally strong.
Ha Long Bay scatters limestone islands and pillars across the Gulf of Tonkin, and Tam Cốc–Bích Động brings the same forms inland, where boats are rowed between karst towers and through low caves among rice fields. Son Doong Cave holds the largest known cave passage in the world, with its own jungle growing where the roof has collapsed, and nearby Paradise Cave is lined with white stalactites for kilometres.
The historic side ranges widely. Mỹ Sơn preserves the brick tower-temples of the Cham kings in a jungle valley, the Imperial City of Hue was the walled seat of the Nguyễn dynasty, and the Tomb of Khai Dinh mixes Vietnamese and European styles in concrete encrusted with porcelain and glass. Hội An's Japanese Bridge is a small covered bridge from the age of foreign merchants, and Phát Diệm Cathedral is a Catholic church built in the form of a Vietnamese temple of stone and wood. Modern bridges have joined in: the Dragon River Bridge in Da Nang and the Golden Bridge, carried by two giant stone hands in the Bà Nà Hills. In the far north, the Mã Pí Lèng Pass climbs above the gorge of the Nho Quế River.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ha Long Bay | Protected area | |
| 2 | Imperial City of Hue | Palace | ✓ |
| 3 | Son Doong Cave | Cave | |
| 4 | Mỹ Sơn Sanctuary | Archaeological site | ✓ |
| 5 | Tam Cốc-Bích Động | Cave | |
| 6 | Paradise Cave (Thiên Đường) | Show cave | |
| 7 | Dragon River Bridge | Bridge | |
| 8 | Golden Bridge (Bà Nà Hills) | Bridge | |
| 9 | Japanese Bridge | Covered bridge | |
| 10 | Phát Diệm Cathedral | Cathedral | |
| 11 | Hang Én (swift cave) | Cave | |
| 12 | Tomb of Khai Dinh | Mausoleum | |
| 13 | Mã Pí Lèng Pass | Mountain pass | |
| 14 | Great Divine Temple | Temple | |
| 15 | Ganh Da Dia | Rock formation | |
| 16 | Phong Nha Cave | Cave |
01 Ha Long Bay
Vietnam · 12.4 km from Hạ Long20.900° N 107.200° E
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by xuanduongvan87 from Pixabay Nearly two thousand limestone islets rise straight out of the green water of Ha Long Bay, in Vietnam's far north-east, spread over some 1,550 square kilometres of the Gulf of Tonkin.
Did you know? Some 60 animal species found in and around the bay are endemic to it.
02 Imperial City of Hue
Vietnam · 0.2 km from Huế16.469° N 107.578° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
This Photo was taken by Supanut Arunoprayote . Feel free to use any of my images, but please mention me as the author and may send me a message. (สามารถใช้ภาพได้อิสระ แต่กรุณาใส่เครดิตผู้ถ่ายและอาจส่ง ข้อความบอกกล่าวด้วย ) Please do not upload an updated image here without consultation with the Author. The author would like to make corrections only at his own source. This ensures that the changes are preserved. Please if you think that any changes should be required, please inform the author. Otherwise you can upload a new image with a new name. Please use one of the templates derivative or extract . · CC BY 4.0 When Nguyễn Phúc Ánh unified Vietnam in 1802 and took the name Gia Long, he chose Huế, the old seat of his family, as the capital, and set about building a court on the model of Beijing's Forbidden City inside a European-style fortress.
Did you know? The Flag Tower facing the river was first raised in 1807; the concrete version standing today dates from 1948.
03 Son Doong Cave
Vietnam · 33.3 km from Đồng Hới17.457° N 106.288° E
Trantuanviet · CC BY-SA 4.0 Hang Sơn Đoòng, in the karst of Phong Nha–Kẻ Bàng National Park near the Laos border, holds the largest known cave passage on Earth. 5 million cubic metres; its cross-section is thought to be roughly twice that of the next-largest passage, Deer Cave in Malaysian Borneo.
Did you know? Trees up to about 30 metres tall grow in the cave's forest, and more than 200 plant species have been recorded underground.
04 Mỹ Sơn Sanctuary
Vietnam · 35.5 km from Da Nang15.763° N 108.124° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
shankar s. from Dubai, united arab emirates · CC BY 2.0 In a green valley about two kilometres across, ringed by two ranges of hills in central Vietnam, stand the ruined red-brick towers of Mỹ Sơn, the great religious centre of the kingdom of Champa.
Did you know? King Prakasadharma began the custom of offering kosas, decorated metal sheaths placed over the linga, and unusually honoured Vishnu as well as Shiva.
05 Tam Cốc-Bích Động
Vietnam · 7.3 km from Ninh Bình20.218° N 105.916° E
Image by nghi123mt from Pixabay Tam Cốc means "three caves", and the name describes the whole experience: a slow boat ride along the Ngô Đồng River, which has cut three tunnels straight through the limestone towers of Ninh Bình.
Did you know? In the 13th century the area served as a royal retreat of the Trần dynasty during its wars against the Mongol-Yuan invasions.
06 Paradise Cave (Thiên Đường)
Vietnam17.520° N 106.223° E
Image by dietmarlaschinski from Pixabay Paradise Cave — Động Thiên Đường in Vietnamese — is a limestone cave in the hills of Phong Nha–Kẻ Bàng National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in central Vietnam. It was found by a local man in 2005, and British cavers of the British Cave Research Association began exploring it the same year.
Did you know? British cavers mapped the first 5 km in 2005 and spent the following years extending the survey, announcing the full length in 2010.
07 Dragon River Bridge
Vietnam · 2.5 km from Da Nang16.061° N 108.227° E
Bùi Thụy Đào Nguyên · CC BY-SA 3.0 This is one of the only bridges anywhere engineered to perform a stunt on a schedule. m. on weekend and holiday nights, the dragon's head genuinely breathes fire and water, jets of flame and mist timed to music and lighting through a system of gas lines, water nozzles and sensors built directly into the sculpture.
Did you know? The bridge is 666 metres long and 37.5 metres wide, carrying six lanes of traffic over a 200-metre main span.
08 Golden Bridge (Bà Nà Hills)
Vietnam · 28.1 km from Da Nang15.995° N 107.996° E
Vivu Vietnam · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Golden Bridge is a gilded walkway about 150 metres long that curls across a mountainside in the Bà Nà Hills west of Da Nang, some 1,400 metres above sea level, held aloft, apparently, by two enormous weathered stone hands rising out of the forest.
Did you know? The walkway is decked in wooden planks about five centimetres thick, edged by gold-finished stainless steel railings.
09 Japanese Bridge
Vietnam · 21.8 km from Da Nang15.877° N 108.326° E
François Guerraz · CC BY-SA 3.0 A short curved bridge with a tiled roof and a tiny temple halfway across, the Japanese Bridge is the emblem of Hội An, the old trading port once known to foreigners as Faifo.
Did you know? The ends of the roof tiles are capped with porcelain bowls, a decorative detail that sets the bridge apart from ordinary tiled roofs in the old town.
10 Phát Diệm Cathedral
Vietnam · 21 km from Ninh Bình20.093° N 106.080° E
Kien1980v at Vietnamese Wikipedia · Public domain Rising from the rice country of the Red River delta, Phát Diệm Cathedral looks at first like a Vietnamese pagoda complex: curved tiled roofs, a broad stone-built hall facing a lake, and a tower-gate that could belong to a temple.
Did you know? The altar was cut from a single stone about 3 metres long that weighs around 20 tonnes.
11 Hang Én (swift cave)
Vietnam · 32.3 km from Đồng Hới17.435° N 106.300° E
Jérémie B. · CC BY-SA 4.0 Hang Én is a cave on a scale that makes a camping tent look like a grain of rice. 6 kilometres long whose entrances and chambers rise around 100 metres high or more and widen in places to well over 150 metres.
Did you know? A British and Vietnamese caving expedition first surveyed Hang Én in 1994.
12 Tomb of Khai Dinh
Vietnam · 7.9 km from Huế16.399° N 107.588° E
Image by DEZALB from Pixabay The tomb of Khải Định is the last and strangest of the imperial mausoleums around Huế, the former capital of the Nguyễn dynasty. Khải Định reigned from 1916 to 1925 under French colonial rule, and the tomb he ordered, officially Ứng Lăng, breaks with the landscaped pavilions of his predecessors.
Did you know? Among the traditional motifs in the mosaics are surprisingly modern objects, including alarm clocks, tennis rackets and oil lamps.
13 Mã Pí Lèng Pass
Vietnam23.240° N 105.400° E
haithanh · CC BY 2.0 Mã Pí Lèng is the climax of the road across the Đồng Văn Karst Plateau, the grey limestone highland on Vietnam's northern frontier that is now a UNESCO Global Geopark.
Did you know? The protected landscape around the pass covers about 796 hectares across the communes of Pải Lủng, Pả Vi and Xín Cái.
14 Great Divine Temple
Vietnam · 2.6 km from Tây Ninh11.304° N 106.134° E
Image by Nguyendangduy from Pixabay The Great Divine Temple at Tây Ninh is the mother church of Caodaism, a faith established in southern Vietnam in 1926 that joins Confucian ethics, Taoist practice, Buddhist ideas of karma and rebirth and a hierarchy modelled on the Catholic Church, and its architecture is as syncretic as its beliefs.
Did you know? In 1941 the French colonial authorities exiled the church's leader Phạm Công Tắc to Madagascar and turned the half-built temple into barracks; work resumed only after his release in 1946.
15 Ganh Da Dia
Vietnam · 28.1 km from Tuy Hòa13.335° N 109.298° E
Đông Hồ · CC BY-SA 2.0 Gành Đá Đĩa — "the sea cliff of stone plates" — is a stretch of the central Vietnamese coast built entirely of tightly packed basalt columns.
Did you know? The stone ranges in colour from black to a brownish yellow, depending on weathering and exposure to the sea.
16 Phong Nha Cave
Vietnam · 35.5 km from Đồng Hới17.582° N 106.282° E
Image by pen_ash from Pixabay Phong Nha Cave opens at the foot of a limestone cliff where the Son River slips into the mountain, and the first part of it is explored by boat on an underground river lined with stalactites and stalagmites. Its name is usually explained as "wind and teeth", after the rows of rock formations near the entrance.
Did you know? The French missionary Léopold Cadière, who explored it in the late 19th century and found Cham writing inside, called it the number one cave of Indochina.
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 Vietnam?
- On our list, Ha Long Bay ranks first, followed by Imperial City of Hue and Son Doong Cave.
- How big is Son Doong Cave?
- Son Doong, in Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng National Park, has the largest known cave passage in the world by volume, with sections high enough to hold a city block of tall buildings. It was found by a local man around 1990 and first explored by British and Vietnamese cavers in 2009.
- How many islands are in Ha Long Bay?
- Ha Long Bay contains around 1,600 limestone islands and islets, most of them uninhabited. The bay is a UNESCO World Heritage Site for both its scenery and its karst geology.
- Why is Tam Coc called Ha Long Bay on land?
- Tam Cốc in Ninh Bình Province has the same kind of tower karst as Ha Long Bay, but the limestone peaks rise from rice paddies and a winding river rather than the sea. Visitors travel by small rowing boats that pass through caves under the hills.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Vietnam?
- In our collection, the places in Vietnam are most often caves (5), bridges (3), temples (2) and rock formations (1).
- How many places are on this list in Vietnam?
- The list covers 16 places.