World Heritage Sites — South America

World Heritage in South America

Eighty-one sites, and a short list of the world's most famous places among them: Machu Picchu and Cusco, the Galápagos, Iguaçu Falls (listed on both the Brazilian and Argentine sides), the Nazca Lines, Easter Island's Rapa Nui, and the Amazon's Central Amazon Conservation Complex. Brazil has 24 and Peru 13; Chile's include the remote Humberstone nitrate works and the churches of Chiloé.

The continent's colonial cities are a list in themselves — Cartagena, Quito, Cusco, Lima's historic center, Sucre, Potosí, Ouro Preto, Salvador de Bahia, Olinda, Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay — and the pre-Columbian sites go far beyond Machu Picchu: Chan Chan, Caral-Supe (the oldest city in the Americas), Tiwanaku, San Agustín, and the Qhapaq Ñan, the Inca road network listed across six countries as a single site.

On this map

The Galápagos, Fernando de Noronha, and Rapa Nui sit far out to sea, so zoom in on the mainland when the coast gets crowded. Caribbean islands and Panama are on the North America map; Brazil's Amazonia Theaters, added in 2026, is the newest site here. Click a badge or its pin to mark a site visited, again for want-to-go.

Planning by country

Peru is the densest: Cusco, Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley, Arequipa, Lima, Nazca, Chan Chan, and Caral can all be done in a single three-week trip along the gringo trail. Brazil's are spread across a country the size of a continent — the Minas Gerais towns, Salvador and Olinda in the northeast, Iguaçu in the south, Brasília in the middle, the Pantanal and the Amazon reserves at opposite ends. Argentina's include Iguazú, the Jesuit missions, Los Glaciares, and the Península Valdés whales. Ecuador has Quito, Cuenca, and the Galápagos, which is the one site on the map that needs a boat and a budget. Colombia's Cartagena and the coffee landscape are the easy pair for a first visit.