The Most Remarkable Amusement Parks in the World
7 places in 7 countries ยท updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most remarkable amusement parks in the world are Tivoli Gardens (Denmark), Wurstelprater (Austria) and Luna Park (Australia). The list covers 7 amusement parks in 7 countries. Australia has the most, with 1. Last updated 14 October 2026.
An amusement park is architecture built for delight, and the most memorable ones are more than a cluster of rides. They have a setting and a character of their own: a garden of lanterns in the middle of a capital, a fairground on a mountaintop above the sea, a themed world built around a volcano. The best combine historic attractions with a strong sense of place, and some have been entertaining their cities for well over a century.
Vienna's Wurstelprater grew up in the Prater park, where the giant Ferris wheel, the Wiener Riesenrad, has turned since 1897. Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen opened in 1843 and mixes rides with gardens, pavilions and lights. Luna Park in Melbourne, opened in 1912, is entered through a giant laughing face, and the Tibidabo park in Barcelona sits on the summit of the mountain, with views over the city to the sea. Efteling in the Netherlands is built around a fairy-tale forest, while the Pripyat amusement park near Chernobyl, with its Ferris wheel that never carried the public, belongs to the zone left empty after 1986.
Parks are chosen for how they look and ordered by beauty. Each has its own text, a photograph credited to its author and a place on the map, and the section also opens by country on separate pages.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tivoli Gardens | Amusement park | Denmark | |
| 2 | Wurstelprater | Amusement park | Austria | |
| 3 | Luna Park | Amusement park | Australia | |
| 4 | Tibidabo Amusement Park | Amusement park | Spain | |
| 5 | Tokyo DisneySea | Amusement park | Japan | |
| 6 | Pripyat amusement park | Amusement park | Ukraine | |
| 7 | Efteling | Amusement park | Kingdom of the Netherlands |
01 Tivoli Gardens
Tivoli
Denmark ยท 0.9 km from Copenhagen55.674ยฐ N 12.568ยฐ E
Image by nozurbina from Pixabay Tivoli Gardens opened in the middle of Copenhagen on 15 August 1843, which makes it the second-oldest amusement park still operating anywhere. Its founder, Georg Carstensen, won royal permission from King Christian VIII by arguing, so the story goes, that people busy enjoying themselves have little time for politics. More than 180 years later the park still occupies a compact site in the city centre, a walled garden of flowerbeds, lakes, pavilions and rides set right across the street from the main railway station.
Did you know? The park's lake is a surviving piece of the moat that once ringed Copenhagen's fortifications, and the site itself lay outside the city walls until the 1850s.
02 Wurstelprater
Austria ยท 3.1 km from Vienna48.215ยฐ N 16.402ยฐ E
Image by rperucho from Pixabay The Wurstelprater is the amusement quarter at the western end of the Prater, Vienna's great public park in the second district. The Prater itself was a royal hunting ground until 1766, when Emperor Joseph II opened it to everyone and allowed showmen, coffee houses and inns to set up there. Puppet shows, swings and carousels followed, and by the late nineteenth century the area had grown into a permanent fairground. It has never become a gated theme park: walking in costs nothing, and each ride, stall and ghost train is run and priced separately by its own operator.
Did you know? The name comes from Hanswurst, the clown of Viennese folk theatre, whose shows were pushed out of the city centre and found a new home here.
03 Luna Park
Australia ยท 2.7 km from Sydney33.848ยฐ S 151.210ยฐ E
Adam.J.W.C. ยท CC BY 3.0 Luna Park Sydney sits on the northern shore of Sydney Harbour at Milsons Point, directly beneath the Harbour Bridge. It opened on 4 October 1935, built largely from rides and equipment shipped from Luna Park Glenelg in Adelaide by a group of showmen including Herman Phillips. Its entrance, a giant grinning face flanked by Art Deco towers, remains one of the most recognisable sights on the harbour.
Did you know? The famous entrance face was first designed by Rupert Browne; in the 1950s Arthur Barton rebuilt it, basing the new look on illustrations of Old King Cole.
04 Tibidabo Amusement Park
Parque de Atracciones Tibidabo
Spain ยท 6.5 km from Barcelona41.422ยฐ N 2.120ยฐ E
Image by Miller_Eszter from Pixabay Tibidabo Amusement Park occupies the summit of Tibidabo, the highest point of the Collserola ridge behind Barcelona, at a little over 500 metres above sea level. It grew out of a scheme promoted from 1899 by the pharmacist and businessman Salvador Andreu to open up the mountain; a funicular and tram line reached the top in 1901, and rides followed in the early years of the century. The park counts its history from that time, marking its 125th anniversary in 2026, which makes it the longest-running amusement park in Spain and one of the oldest still working anywhere. It is now owned by Barcelona City Council.
Did you know? Walt Disney reportedly tried to buy the entire automaton collection in 1957, offering blank cheques, and was turned down.
05 Tokyo DisneySea
Japan ยท 14.2 km from Tokyo35.627ยฐ N 139.888ยฐ E
CasinoKat ยท CC BY-SA 3.0 Tokyo DisneySea opened on 4 September 2001 next to Tokyo Disneyland on reclaimed land in Urayasu, on the shore of Tokyo Bay. Unlike most Disney parks, it is not owned by the Walt Disney Company: the Oriental Land Company built and runs the whole Tokyo Disney Resort, paying Disney for the use of its characters and designs. The park cost about 335 billion yen, and its level of detail, in buildings, props and landscaping, is widely considered unusually high even among Disney parks. It reached ten million guests in just 307 days after opening.
Did you know? The park grew out of Port Disney, an abandoned plan for a sea-themed Disney park in Southern California built around the ocean liner Queen Mary.
06 Pripyat amusement park
ะะฐัะบ ัะพะทะฒะฐะณ (ะัะธะฟ'ััั)
Ukraine51.408ยฐ N 30.057ยฐ E
Image by 1681551 from Pixabay The amusement park in Pripyat is probably the most photographed fairground that never properly worked. It was built in the centre of the Soviet atomic city, next to the Palace of Culture, and was due to open on 1 May 1986 as part of the May Day festivities. On 26 April reactor No. 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, about 3 km from the town, exploded, and the next day Pripyat's population of nearly 50,000 was evacuated. Stories that the rides were switched on for a few hours on 27 April to lift people's spirits circulate widely, but no reliable evidence has been found to support them.
Did you know? The Ferris wheel was a standard Soviet model called Krugovoy Obzor, roughly Panoramic View, made by the Attraktsion company in Yeysk.
07 Efteling
Kingdom of the Netherlands ยท 18.9 km from 's-Hertogenbosch51.650ยฐ N 5.048ยฐ E
Rรฉmih ยท CC BY-SA 4.0 Efteling began as a village idea rather than a business plan. In the 1930s a local priest and his chaplain in Kaatsheuvel laid out a sports ground; in 1950 the mayor of Loon op Zand, Reinier van der Heijden, turned it into a foundation together with the filmmaker Peter Reijnders and the illustrator Anton Pieck, hoping to draw visitors to a quiet corner of North Brabant. The park opened on 31 May 1952, its name going back to a sixteenth-century farm, and its heart was a Fairytale Forest of ten scenes designed by Pieck: Sleeping Beauty's castle, Snow White, the Frog King, Frau Holle's well, a gnome village among them.
Did you know? Efteling opened in 1952, three years before the original Disneyland, and its park area is about twice as large.
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 โ 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
- How old is Tivoli Gardens?
- Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen opened in 1843, which makes it one of the oldest amusement parks still in operation.
- What is the most remarkable amusement park in the world?
- On our list, Tivoli Gardens (Denmark) ranks first, followed by Wurstelprater (Austria) and Luna Park (Australia).
- Did the Pripyat Ferris wheel ever operate?
- The amusement park in Pripyat was due to open on 1 May 1986. The Chernobyl accident on 26 April came first, the town was evacuated, and the park never opened to the public.
- Which country has the most amusement parks?
- In our collection, the most come from Australia (1), Austria (1) and Denmark (1).
- How many amusement parks are on this list in the world?
- The list covers 7 amusement parks in 7 countries. Australia has the most, with 1.