The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed National Parks in South America
5 places in 4 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful UNESCO-listed national parks in South America are Canaima National Park (Venezuela), Iguazú National Park (Argentina) and Huascarán National Park (Peru). The list covers 5 UNESCO-listed national parks in 4 countries. Argentina has the most, with 2. Last updated 14 October 2026.
South America's World Heritage parks cover extremes: tabletop mountains older than the Andes, tropical glaciers, volcanic islands that shaped evolutionary theory and red desert canyons full of fossils. UNESCO listing marks these as places of global value for geology and life, not just for scenery.
Canaima National Park in Venezuela is the land of tepuis, sheer sandstone plateaus, and Angel Falls drops from one of them as the highest uninterrupted waterfall on Earth. Iguazú National Park in Argentina shares its horseshoe of falls with Brazil, culminating in the Devil's Throat. Huascarán National Park in Peru protects the Cordillera Blanca, with the country's highest peak and the largest concentration of tropical glaciers. Galápagos National Park covers the islands whose finches and tortoises helped Darwin form his ideas. Talampaya National Park in Argentina has red sandstone walls rising straight from a dry riverbed, with Triassic fossils in its rocks.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canaima National Park | National park | Venezuela | ✓ |
| 2 | Iguazú National Park | National park | Argentina | ✓ |
| 3 | Huascarán National Park | National park | Peru | ✓ |
| 4 | Galápagos National Park | National park | Ecuador | ✓ |
| 5 | 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 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.
04 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.
05 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 national parks in South America?
- On our list, Canaima National Park (Venezuela) ranks first, followed by Iguazú National Park (Argentina) and Huascarán National Park (Peru).
- Which country has the most UNESCO-listed national parks in South America?
- In our collection, the most come from Argentina (2), Ecuador (1) and Peru (1).
- What is a tepui?
- A tepui is a flat-topped mountain with sheer cliffs, formed from ancient sandstone in the Guiana Highlands. Their summits are isolated enough to hold plants and animals found nowhere else.
- How high is Angel Falls?
- Angel Falls drops 979 metres in total, with an uninterrupted plunge of about 807 metres, from the edge of Auyán-tepui in Canaima National Park.
- How many UNESCO-listed national parks are on this list in South America?
- The list covers 5 UNESCO-listed national parks in 4 countries. Argentina has the most, with 2.