The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Gardens, Parks and Forests in South America
6 places in 4 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful UNESCO-listed gardens, parks and forests in South America are Canaima National Park (Venezuela), Iguazú National Park (Argentina) and Ischigualasto Provincial Park (Argentina). The list covers 6 UNESCO-listed gardens, parks and forests in 4 countries. Argentina has the most, with 3. Last updated 14 October 2026.
South America's protected landscapes span almost every extreme on earth: ancient sandstone plateaus older than the Andes, tropical glaciers on the equator's edge, waterfalls fed by the rains of the Atlantic forest and volcanic islands where evolution was first understood. UNESCO lists these parks for exceptional natural features, for the record of life they preserve or for both, and the region's national parks were created largely to protect exactly such places.
Canaima National Park in Venezuela is the land of the tepuis, flat-topped table mountains of very old sandstone, from one of which Angel Falls drops in the world's highest uninterrupted waterfall. Iguazú National Park in Argentina surrounds the horseshoe of falls on the Iguazú River, with the Devil's Throat at its heart, set in subtropical rainforest. Ischigualasto, the Valley of the Moon, exposes Triassic rocks that hold some of the earliest known dinosaurs, and neighbouring Talampaya encloses a canyon between towering red cliffs. Huascarán National Park in Peru protects the Cordillera Blanca, the highest tropical mountain range on earth, with Peru's highest summit. The Galápagos, far out in the Pacific, are home to giant tortoises, marine iguanas and the finches that helped Charles Darwin develop the theory of evolution.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canaima National Park | National park | Venezuela | ✓ |
| 2 | Iguazú National Park | National park | Argentina | ✓ |
| 3 | Ischigualasto Provincial Park | Protected area | Argentina | ✓ |
| 4 | Huascarán National Park | National park | Peru | ✓ |
| 5 | Galápagos National Park | National park | Ecuador | ✓ |
| 6 | Talampaya National Park | National park | Argentina | ✓ |
01 Canaima National Park
Parque Nacional Canaima
Venezuela5.319° N 61.795° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by Jrafave from Pixabay Canaima National Park covers about 30,000 square kilometres of south-eastern Venezuela, stretching to the borders with Brazil and Guyana and taking in most of the Gran Sabana. It is one of the largest national parks in the world, roughly the size of Belgium.
Did you know? Angel Falls takes its name from American pilot Jimmie Angel, who flew over it in 1933 and crash-landed his plane on top of Auyán-tepui in 1937.
02 Iguazú National Park
Parque Nacional Iguazú
Argentina · 34.7 km from Foz do Iguaçu25.705° S 54.248° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by AndreaRochas from Pixabay Argentina created Iguazú National Park in 1934 to protect the greater part of the Iguazú Falls and the subtropical forest around them, and UNESCO listed it in 1984, together with its Brazilian counterpart across the river. The park covers 677 square kilometres of the far north of Misiones province.
Did you know? On 9 June 2014 the falls carried a record flow of about 45,700 cubic metres per second, more than five times Niagara's highest recorded flow.
03 Ischigualasto Provincial Park
Argentina30.117° S 67.912° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
M.Bustos · CC BY-SA 4.0 Ischigualasto is a dry basin in northeastern San Juan province where the ground itself reads like a book of the Late Triassic. Here, in rocks laid down roughly 231 to 226 million years ago, lie some of the earliest dinosaurs known anywhere — and around them a landscape so stripped and strange that by the 1940s it was already being called the Valle de la Luna, the Valley of the Moon.
Did you know? Dinosaurs are surprisingly rare here: estimates put them at only about 5 to 11 percent of all the four-limbed animals found.
04 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. Its highest summit, Huascarán, reaches 6,768 metres, the top of Peru, and around it rise Huandoy, Copa, Huantsán and dozens of other peaks above 6,000 metres.
Did you know? In 1970 an earthquake broke away part of Huascarán's north face, sending some 80 million cubic metres of ice and rock down onto the towns of Yungay and Ranrahirca.
05 Galápagos National Park
Parque nacional Galápagos
Ecuador0.333° S 90.000° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Jonathan Green · CC BY 4.0 Galápagos National Park covers about 97 percent of the land of the Galápagos archipelago, a scatter of more than a hundred volcanic islands, islets and rocks straddling the equator some 900 km west of mainland Ecuador. Only the settled corners of Santa Cruz, San Cristóbal, Isabela and Baltra lie outside it.
Did you know? The Galápagos Islands were the very first entry on UNESCO's World Heritage List, inscribed in 1978 as site number 1.
06 Talampaya National Park
Parque Nacional Talampaya
Argentina29.796° S 67.811° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Gino Lucas T. · CC BY-SA 2.5 Talampaya is a dry river that left behind a cathedral. Over millions of years water and wind cut down through layers of red Triassic sandstone in the far west of La Rioja province, and the result is a canyon whose sheer walls rise to around 145 metres, stained in iron reds and streaked with dark desert varnish, narrowing at one point to only about 80 metres wide.
Did you know? Among the park's fossils is Palaeochersis talampayensis, one of the oldest turtles known anywhere, which lived here in the Late Triassic more than 210 million years ago.
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 UNESCO-listed gardens, parks and forests in South America?
- On our list, Canaima National Park (Venezuela) ranks first, followed by Iguazú National Park (Argentina) and Ischigualasto Provincial Park (Argentina).
- Which country has the most UNESCO-listed gardens, parks and forests in South America?
- In our collection, the most come from Argentina (3), Ecuador (1) and Peru (1).
- What is a tepui?
- A tepui is a flat-topped table mountain with sheer cliffs, made of very old Precambrian sandstone, found in the Guiana Highlands of Venezuela and neighbouring countries. Their isolated summits host plants found nowhere else.
- Why is Ischigualasto important for dinosaur research?
- Its rocks record the Triassic period in unusual completeness, and they have yielded some of the oldest known dinosaurs, such as Eoraptor and Herrerasaurus.
- Were the Galápagos among the first UNESCO World Heritage Sites?
- Yes. The Galápagos Islands were among the first twelve sites inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1978.
- How many UNESCO-listed gardens, parks and forests are on this list in South America?
- The list covers 6 UNESCO-listed gardens, parks and forests in 4 countries. Argentina has the most, with 3.