The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in South America
18 places in 8 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful sacred places in South America are Las Lajas Sanctuary (Colombia), Christ the Redeemer (Brazil) and São Bento Monastery, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). The list covers 18 sacred places in 8 countries. Brazil has the most, with 9. Last updated 13 October 2026.
South America's sacred places record a meeting of worlds. Spanish and Portuguese builders arrived in the sixteenth century and often built directly on Inca foundations; in colonial Brazil, gold from Minas Gerais paid for churches gilded from floor to ceiling and for a school of Baroque sculpture of its own. In the twentieth century the continent turned to concrete and brick and produced some of the boldest religious architecture of the modern age.
Las Lajas Sanctuary in Colombia is a Gothic Revival basilica bridging the gorge of the Guáitara River, its back wall formed by the rock face itself. Christ the Redeemer has stood on the summit of Corcovado above Rio de Janeiro since 1931, built of reinforced concrete faced with soapstone tiles. In Cusco, the curved, mortarless walls of Coricancha, the Inca temple of the Sun, still carry the Dominican convent built on top of them.
Oscar Niemeyer's Cathedral of Brasília is a crown of sixteen curved concrete columns, and in Uruguay Eladio Dieste's Church of Cristo Obrero at Atlántida shapes plain brick into rippling walls and a waving roof. The São Francisco Church in Salvador is among the richest gilded interiors in Brazil, while the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos at Congonhas is guarded by twelve soapstone prophets carved by Aleijadinho. In Buenos Aires, Recoleta Cemetery is a city of marble mausoleums.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Las Lajas Sanctuary | Pilgrimage site | Colombia | |
| 2 | Christ the Redeemer | Sculpture | Brazil | |
| 3 | São Bento Monastery, Rio de Janeiro | Abbey | Brazil | |
| 4 | Church of San Francisco, Castro | Church building | Chile | ✓ |
| 5 | Cathedral of Brasília | Cathedral | Brazil | |
| 6 | Coricancha | Temple | Peru | |
| 7 | Recoleta Cemetery | Cemetery | Argentina | |
| 8 | São Francisco Church and Convent, Salvador | Church building | Brazil | |
| 9 | Church of Cristo Obrero, Atlántida | Church building | Uruguay | ✓ |
| 10 | Church of Saint Francis of Assisi (Pampulha) | Church building | Brazil | |
| 11 | Saint Peter and Paul Cathedral | Cathedral | Suriname | |
| 12 | Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos | Church building | Brazil | ✓ |
| 13 | La Compañía de Jesús, Quito | Church building | Ecuador | |
| 14 | Santa Catalina Monastery, Arequipa | Monastery | Peru | |
| 15 | Church of Saint Francis of Assisi (Ouro Preto) | Church building | Brazil | |
| 16 | Capela Dourada | Church building | Brazil | |
| 17 | Iglesia de San Pedro, Andahuaylillas | Church building | Peru | |
| 18 | Mother Church of Saint Anthony, Tiradentes | Church building | Brazil |
01 Las Lajas Sanctuary
Colombia · 7.6 km from Ipiales0.805° N 77.586° W
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0 What people still argue about is the image itself: a figure on the natural rock face that, according to the sanctuary's own account of a scientific examination, shows no trace of paint or pigment on the surface — the colour appears to run into the stone rather than sit on it. It is the kind of claim that resists easy verification, and it is worth treating as exactly that: a claim central to why pilgrims keep coming, not a settled fact.
Did you know? The earliest known written mention of the shrine is in the travel chronicle of the Franciscan Juan de Santa Gertrudis, who journeyed through the region between 1756 and 1762.
02 Christ the Redeemer
Cristo Redentor
Brazil · 4.9 km from Rio de Janeiro22.952° S 43.210° W
Image by FlaviaPadula from Pixabay Underneath, it's reinforced concrete; the outer skin is soapstone, chosen specifically because it's easy to shape into smooth curves and holds up far better than bare concrete against the salt air and humidity at the summit of Corcovado. Silva Costa won the design competition in 1922, and the statue was dedicated on 12 October 1931.
Did you know? A small chapel in the base of the statue was consecrated in October 2006, on the 75th anniversary of its completion.
03 São Bento Monastery, Rio de Janeiro
Mosteiro de São Bento
Brazil · 3.7 km from Rio de Janeiro22.897° S 43.178° W
Halley Pacheco de Oliveira · CC BY-SA 3.0 The monastery's plain, almost fortress-like façade gives no hint of what waits inside: a richly gilded Baroque interior where wood carving covers nearly every surface in gold leaf, one of the most extensive uses of gilding in colonial Brazilian religious architecture.
Did you know? The German-born monk Ricardo do Pilar painted his masterpiece, the Senhor dos Martírios, for the sacristy around 1690.
04 Church of San Francisco, Castro
Iglesia de San Francisco
Chile · 0.1 km from Castro42.481° S 73.764° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Rjcastillo · CC BY-SA 4.0 This building is the odd one out among the sixteen Chiloé churches on the UNESCO list. The others follow the island's own school of wooden architecture; San Francisco was designed by the Italian architect Eduardo Provasoli in a Gothic Revival idiom and built between 1910 and 1912 under the direction of the friar Ángel Custodio Subiabre.
Did you know? Castro is Chile's third-oldest city in continuous existence, founded as Santiago de Castro on the orders of the governor Rodrigo de Quiroga.
05 Cathedral of Brasília
Catedral Metropolitana de Brasília
Brazil · 4.9 km from Brasília15.798° S 47.876° W
Mariordo (Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz) · CC BY-SA 4.0 The idea came together with the city itself. The cornerstone was laid in September 1958, and the bare structure — the sixteen columns, each weighing about 90 tonnes, calculated by the engineer Joaquim Cardozo — stood complete on 21 April 1960. Then the building waited for years as a bare skeleton; it was consecrated in 1968 and formally opened in 1970 as the Metropolitan Cathedral of Our Lady of Aparecida.
Did you know? When the cathedral was consecrated in October 1968 it still had no roof; its glass skin came only later.
06 Coricancha
Peru · 0.7 km from Cuzco13.520° S 71.976° W
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Quechua name Quri Kancha means "golden enclosure". It was the chief temple of the Inca state, dedicated above all to Inti, the sun god, though chambers inside also honoured the Moon, thunder and other celestial powers. According to the chroniclers, the emperor Pachacuti rebuilt and enriched it, and its walls were sheathed in sheets of gold while the courtyard held golden figures.
Did you know? Before it was called the golden enclosure, the temple was known as Intikancha or Intiwasi, the enclosure or house of the Sun.
07 Recoleta Cemetery
Argentina · 4.4 km from Buenos Aires34.588° S 58.393° W
Image by dpkelly07 from Pixabay The ground was once the garden of a convent of the Recollect friars, from whom the district takes its name. After the order was expelled, Governor Martín Rodríguez and his minister Bernardino Rivadavia opened the site in November 1822 as the first public cemetery of Buenos Aires, with a plan drawn by the French engineer Prosper Catelin.
Did you know? Rufina's Art Nouveau tomb in Carrara marble shows a life-size statue of her with a hand on the door of her own mausoleum.
08 São Francisco Church and Convent, Salvador
Igreja e Convento de São Francisco
Brazil · 3 km from Salvador12.975° S 38.509° W
Wellington Da Costa Gomez · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Franciscans came to Salvador in 1587, but their first convent and church were destroyed during the Dutch invasions of Bahia in the following century. Rebuilding began on a grand scale under Father Vicente das Chagas in 1686; the present church was laid out from 1708 and structurally finished by 1723, and the decoration of its interior went on for decades, most of it complete by 1755.
Did you know? The facade stone came from the Boa Viagem quarry on the Itapagipe peninsula, which was itself donated to the Franciscan friars.
09 Church of Cristo Obrero, Atlántida
Iglesia de Cristo Obrero y Nuestra Señora de Lourdes
Uruguay34.744° S 55.766° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
María Beatriz Rodriguez · CC BY-SA 3.0 The effect is clearest in the long side walls, which undulate in gentle waves, rising from straight lines at the ground to deep curves at the top where they meet the roof. The roof itself is a sequence of Gaussian vaults — double-curved brick shells that carry their own weight through their form, with no beams or columns inside.
Did you know? Inside are a carved wooden Christ by the sculptor Eduardo Díaz Yepes and an altar made from a rough block of green granite.
10 Church of Saint Francis of Assisi (Pampulha)
Igreja São Francisco de Assis
Brazil · 8.9 km from Belo Horizonte19.858° S 43.979° W
Bernardo Gouvêa · CC BY-SA 3.0 The chapel belonged to a leisure district that Juscelino Kubitschek, then mayor of Belo Horizonte and later president of Brazil, commissioned around Lake Pampulha: a casino (now the Pampulha Art Museum), a dance hall known as the Casa do Baile, a yacht club and this church, with gardens by Roberto Burle Marx and structural engineering by Joaquim Cardozo.
Did you know? It was the last building of the Pampulha ensemble to be inaugurated, and is regarded as the masterpiece of the whole group.
11 Saint Peter and Paul Cathedral
Sint-Petrus-en-Pauluskathedraal
Suriname · 1.6 km from Paramaribo5.829° N 55.154° W
Davidsoe (shifted by Rabanus Flavus ) · CC BY-SA 4.0 The site has a curious history. In 1826 Paramaribo's Catholics took over De Verrezene Phoenix, a theatre built in 1809 by members of the city's Dutch Jewish community, and turned it into a church; it became a cathedral when a diocese was created in 1858. As the congregation outgrew it, the diocese commissioned a new building on the same plot from Frans Harmes.
Did you know? Each tower is ringed by four smaller flanking turrets, and the neo-Gothic wooden spires were added only around 1901.
12 Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos
Santuário do Bom Jesus de Matosinhos
Brazil · 19.4 km from Conselheiro Lafaiete20.508° S 43.861° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by bea_marques from Pixabay The church is a single-nave colonial Baroque building with a richly gilded Rococo interior, but what draws most visitors is outside. A monumental terrace with curving double staircases, built between 1777 and 1790, was later populated with twelve Old Testament prophets carved in soapstone by Aleijadinho and his workshop between 1800 and 1805.
Did you know? The curving terrace has Portuguese precedents in the stairways of Bom Jesus do Monte at Braga and Nossa Senhora dos Remédios at Lamego.
13 La Compañía de Jesús, Quito
Iglesia de la Compañía
Ecuador · 1.6 km from Quito0.221° S 78.514° W
Ranoutofusername · CC BY-SA 4.0 Its building took the Jesuits a century and a half. Work began in earnest in 1605 on plans sent from Rome, and the Italian Jesuit Marcos Guerra, who arrived in 1636, gave the church its Renaissance bones: the barrel-vaulted nave, the side chapels under small domes, the great dome over the crossing, about 27 m high and lit by twelve windows. The plan recalls the Gesù in Rome, though with three naves instead of one.
Did you know? The Jesuits enjoyed their finished facade for only two years: Charles III of Spain expelled the order from his empire in 1767.
14 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 What makes the place unforgettable is colour. The buildings are made of sillar, the volcanic stone of the Arequipa region — white from Chachani, pinkish from Misti — and many walls are washed in deep terracotta red and intense cobalt blue, with geranium pots, arched doorways and stone stairways set against them.
Did you know? The 1770 laundry uses 20 halved clay jars once made for storing grain, maize or wine; a stone diverted water from a central channel into each one.
15 Church of Saint Francis of Assisi (Ouro Preto)
Igreja de São Francisco de Assis (Ouro Preto)
Brazil20.387° S 43.503° W
Sarah and Iain · CC BY 2.0 Look first at the facade. Instead of the usual square towers, two round bell towers flank the front, giving the building a soft, curving silhouette against the hills.
Did you know? The Third Order first petitioned Lisbon's Council of Conscience and Orders for permission in 1752, some thirteen years before work began.
16 Capela Dourada
Brazil · 3.5 km from Recife8.062° S 34.877° W
Wilfredor · CC0 The chapel belongs to the Third Order of Saint Francis and was built as the Chapel of the Novices (Capela dos Noviços) beside the Franciscan Convent of Santo Antônio. Its cornerstone was laid on 13 May 1696, it was opened on 15 September 1697, and work on its decoration went on until 1724. The Portuguese captain Antônio Fernandes de Matos directed the construction.
Did you know? By the time the work ended in 1724, the chapel's gilded decoration far outshone that of the convent church it was built beside.
17 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 The church was probably built in the late sixteenth century, possibly over an earlier Inca shrine, since remains of Inca walls survive inside. It has a single nave with side chapels and thick mud-brick walls. Its outward style is a provincial Renaissance, while the interior belongs fully to the Baroque.
Did you know? The village name means copper-coloured meadow in Quechua; the Spanish diminutive was added to distinguish it from the larger town of Andahuaylas.
18 Mother Church of Saint Anthony, Tiradentes
Igreja Matriz de Santo Antônio
Brazil · 7.8 km from São João del Rei21.110° S 44.178° W
Ricardo André Frantz · CC BY 3.0 The interior is a cave of carved and gilded wood. Between 1739 and 1750 the Portuguese carver João Ferreira Sampaio created the altarpieces, wall linings and throne of the chancel in the Joanine style, named after King João V of Portugal, with twisting Solomonic columns, garlands, shells and scrolls; the ceiling panels are painted in tempera and gold leaf.
Did you know? A silver oil lamp made in Rio de Janeiro and weighing about 55 kg hangs among the church's treasures of colonial silverwork.
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 sacred places in South America?
- On our list, Las Lajas Sanctuary (Colombia) ranks first, followed by Christ the Redeemer (Brazil) and São Bento Monastery, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil).
- Which country has the most sacred places in South America?
- In our collection, the most come from Brazil (9), Peru (3) and Argentina (1).
- How tall is Christ the Redeemer?
- The statue itself is 30 metres tall and stands on a pedestal of about 8 metres; its outstretched arms span 28 metres. It was completed in 1931 on the summit of Corcovado mountain in Rio de Janeiro.
- Why is Las Lajas Sanctuary built over a gorge?
- It marks the place where, according to local tradition, an image of the Virgin Mary appeared on the rock of the canyon wall in the eighteenth century. The present church, built in the first half of the twentieth century, uses that rock as the back wall behind its altar.
- Who was Aleijadinho?
- Antônio Francisco Lisboa, known as Aleijadinho, was an eighteenth-century sculptor and architect from Minas Gerais and the leading figure of Brazilian Baroque. His twelve soapstone prophets at the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos in Congonhas are considered his masterpiece.
- How many sacred places are on this list in South America?
- The list covers 18 sacred places in 8 countries. Brazil has the most, with 9.