South America Archives | World Heritage Sites

A row of elegant buildings in Renaissance styles, all painted in pastel colors.

Historic Centre of Salvador de Bahia

A 16th-18th-century colonial capital where European, African and Indigenous cultural influences have blended and echo to the present day.

Penguins on a stony beach at Peninsula Valdes.

Peninsula Valdés

A peninsula in the Atlantic that is a breeding ground for many marine mammals and birds, including some endangered and endemic species.

A lake surrounded by mountains with a single kayaker in the lake.

Huascarán National Park

A beautiful mountainous landscape in the Andes, with a wide diversity of geological features and species.

Iguazu waterfall with a rainbow in front of it.

Iguazu National Park

One of the world’s largest and most beautiful waterfall systems, comprised of 275 individual waterfalls.

View along a dune, people in bathing suits, blue water in the pond below.

Lençóis Maranhenses National Park

A beautiful and constantly-shifting landscape of dunes and rainy-season ponds and lakes.

View across the icefield, jagged and white.

Los Glaciares National Park

A landscape of breathtaking natural beauty with dramatic glaciers and jagged mountains.

A motorboat moored at a wooden dock. On the opposite shore mountains rise from the lake, forested below, sheer rock above.

Los Alerces National Park

A stunningly beautiful park with mountains, lakes and forests, and the second-oldest trees in the world.

View up a cobbled street, low adobe houses on either side.

Historic Quarter of the City of Colonia del Sacramento

A well-preserved colonial city that reflects both Spanish and Portuguese influences.

A rock face covered in paintings in dark red depicting people and animals as well as boats and buildings and geometric patterns.

Chiribiquete National Park – “The Maloca of the Jaguar”

A large Amazonian forest with unusual rock formations and ancient rock paintings.

Three statues, with more behind them that are barely visible, support a large flat stone, forming a table. The statues have human faces wearing headresses and carrying clubs of some sort.

San Agustín Archaeological Park

Burial mounds and statuary from a complex pre-Columbian culture.

This view from a mountain of Rio de Janeiro shows how much nature surrounds the city, with mountains around it and rows of mountains in the distance as well.

Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between the Mountain and the Sea

A vibrant city nestled between lush mountains and the sea.

A bright yellow house on a sloping hill.

Historic Quarter of the Seaport City of Valparaíso

An important 19th-century port city that preserves its urban industrial architecture to this day.

The classic view of the Machu Picchu ruins: On a ridge that ends in a sharp peak, the steep walls of what was the citadel form terraces in the steep sides of the ridge. On a small flat area along the top of the ridge, the ruins of buildings.

Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu

Evocative Incan ruins in a magnificent mountainous setting.

Rapa Nui National Park

Also known as Easter Island, famous for its huge stone statues of human heads.

White buildings around a plaza in Quito, Ecuador. They have decorative moldings around windos and doors, and the one in the center of the photo, the corner of the plaza, is higher than most at about 5 stories.

City of Quito

A South American city with an extremely well-preserved center and beautiful examples of the “Baroque school of Quito.”

A church, relatively simple, with a peaked roof and a square tower to the side. It is mostly white plaster, with some light yellow columns next to the center entrance and light-yellow trim.

Historic Centre of Santa Cruz de Mompox

A Spanish colonial river port with a collection of authentic and well-preserved colonial-era churches and other buildings.

View from a height over a white sand beach in a bay, enclosed by land on either side. Turquoise blue water, a few scattered people..

Galápagos Islands

An archipelago that inspired Darwin’s theory of evolution and teems with wildlife found nowhere else.

Facing the altar, with some of the side walls and arched ceiling visible. Every inch is ornately decorated with religious and natural imageray, as well as architectural features like arches and such. Literally all of it is covered in gold.

Historic Town of Ouro Preto

City of Black Gold and treasury of baroque and Portuguese colonial architecture.

A pretty row of single story houses: all painted white but with bright paint of various colors around windows and doors.

Paraty and Ilha Grande – Culture and Biodiversity

Colonial architecture, traditional communities, and large and richly diverse nature reserves.

City of Cuzco

Imperial city of the ancient Incas high in the Andes mountains.

In the foreground, stone walls with people walking along the tops. In the background the modern city skyline with its skyscrapers.

Port, Fortresses and Group of Monuments, Cartagena

An excellent example of colonial military architecture in an important location for Caribbean exploration and trade.

A view of part of the waterfall: the tops of trees in the foreground, in the middle distance a wooden walkway winds over a flat part of the falls, in the background a wall of white falling water coming off a wide flat cliff.

Iguaçu National Park

Biodiverse subtropical rainforest with a spectacular waterfall system.

A pretty yellow building with two storeys facing on a pleasant square with greenery and a fountain.

Historic Centre of Santa Ana de los Ríos de Cuenca

A beautiful Spanish colonial city that shows successful blending of cultures.

A view from above of a light brown landscape, like a desert. A few roads cut through it and to the right of them, an outline of a bird with a long beak and lots of simple wing and tail feathers. Below that is the shadow of the airplane.

Lines and Geoglyphs of Nazca and Palpa

Huge images and straight lines drawn in the desert by pre-Columbian people.

A scene of mountains covered with green growth with, in the foreground a hawk flying.

Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia

Where the best coffee in the world is produced: a stunning and culturally rich region set in the heart of Colombia.