Attractions & Natural Wonders · Brazil

Brazil: Ten Attractions and Natural Wonders

A statue with its arms open over Rio, the largest waterfall system on the planet, a wetland teeming with jaguars, and a desert of white dunes filled with blue lakes

By Globeway Editorial · 30 September 2026

A giant white statue of Christ with arms outstretched on a forested mountain peak above a bay and city — Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado, above Rio de Janeiro, Guanabara Bay and Sugarloaf beyond. (Gustavo Facci / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0)

A country the size of a continent

Brazil covers nearly half of South America and holds most of the Amazon, most of the Pantanal, 7,000 kilometres of Atlantic coast, and a population of over 200 million. Its attractions are scattered accordingly — travellers fly between them, often for hours. There is a famous city, a famous waterfall, and a famous rainforest, and then a great deal more that most first-time visitors never reach.

The ten below try to cover the range: cities, coast, wetland, desert, colonial towns, and the forest. Seasons vary by region — the south is best October to March; the Amazon and Pantanal have distinct wet and dry seasons that change what is possible.

1. Rio de Janeiro

A rounded granite peak rising from the sea at the mouth of a bay, city and beaches around it — Sugarloaf Mountain at the entrance to Guanabara Bay, reached by a two-stage cable car. (Helder Ribeiro / Wikimedia Commons)

Rio's setting — forested granite peaks dropping straight into the Atlantic, with beaches and favelas packed into every gap — is a UNESCO World Heritage "cultural landscape". The two set-piece viewpoints are Corcovado, topped by the 38-metre Christ the Redeemer statue and reached by cog railway, and Sugarloaf, reached by cable car. Between them lie the beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema, the bohemian Santa Teresa district, the Selarón Steps, and the Maracanã stadium.

Carnival, in February or March, turns the whole city into a five-day street party.

2. The Iguaçu Falls

A vast curved wall of waterfalls tumbling through jungle, rainbows in the spray — The Iguaçu Falls, on the border with Argentina — 275 separate falls along nearly 3 km. (Fellipe Toffolo de Souza / Wikimedia Commons)

Shared with Argentina, Iguaçu is a system of hundreds of waterfalls strung along a horseshoe of the Iguaçu River, set in a national park of subtropical rainforest. The Brazilian side gives the wide panoramic view and a walkway out to the lower base of the Devil's Throat; the Argentine side has walkways out over the top of the falls. Most visitors do both, crossing the border for the day.

The city of Foz do Iguaçu has the airport and hotels, plus the enormous Itaipu hydroelectric dam nearby.

3. The Amazon and Manaus

Two rivers flowing side by side without mixing — one dark brown, one sandy — with a sharp line between — The Meeting of Waters near Manaus, where the black Rio Negro runs alongside the pale Solimões for kilometres before mixing. (Ana Claudia Jatahy / Wikimedia Commons)

Manaus, a city of two million in the middle of the rainforest, is the usual gateway to the Brazilian Amazon — reached by air, or by multi-day riverboat. Its own sights are the extravagant 1896 opera house, the Teatro Amazonas, built with rubber-boom money, and the Meeting of Waters just downstream, where two great rivers flow side by side without blending.

From here, jungle lodges and liveaboard boats run trips for caiman-spotting, pink river dolphins, canoe excursions in the flooded forest, and visits to riverside communities.

4. Salvador and the Pelourinho

A steep cobbled square lined with brightly painted baroque colonial buildings and a blue church — The Largo do Pelourinho in Salvador, the colonial heart of Brazil's first capital. (Paul R. Burley / Wikimedia Commons)

Salvador, in the northeastern state of Bahia, was Brazil's capital until 1763 and a major port of the transatlantic slave trade to the country — and it is the centre of Afro-Brazilian culture: Candomblé religion, capoeira, the drumming of Olodum, and a distinctive cuisine of dendê palm oil and seafood. Its old upper town, the Pelourinho, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site of pastel baroque churches and mansions on steep cobbled lanes.

The name "Pelourinho" means whipping post — the square was a place of public punishment of enslaved people — and the district's museums address that history directly.

5. The Pantanal

A jaguar walking along a riverbank in a wetland landscape — A jaguar along the Three Brothers River in the Pantanal, the world's largest tropical wetland and one of the best places on Earth to see wild jaguars. (Charles J. Sharp / Wikimedia Commons)

The Pantanal is a seasonally flooded plain of some 140,000–160,000 square kilometres, the world's largest tropical wetland, and for actually seeing wildlife it beats the Amazon — the open country makes animals visible. It has one of the largest and healthiest jaguar populations on Earth (best seen along the rivers of the northern Pantanal in the dry season), plus giant otters, tapir, capybara, caiman by the thousand, hyacinth macaws, and jabiru storks.

Access is via the "Transpantaneira" dirt road from Poconé in the north, or from Campo Grande and the town of Miranda in the south. The dry season, July to October, is prime.

6. Fernando de Noronha

A crescent beach at the foot of jungle-topped cliffs, brilliant turquoise water offshore — Baía do Sancho on Fernando de Noronha, one of the archipelago's most popular beaches. (Dronepicr / Wikimedia Commons)

This volcanic archipelago 350 kilometres off the northeast coast is Brazil's premier marine destination: a national marine park and UNESCO World Heritage Site with a large resident population of spinner dolphins, sea turtles, sharks, and exceptionally clear water. Tourism is tightly restricted to protect the fragile ecosystem.

Only one island is inhabited, with a small town and a scatter of pousadas. Diving, dolphin watching, and a string of postcard beaches — Baía do Sancho, Baía dos Porcos, Sueste Bay — are the draw.

7. The Lençóis Maranhenses

Rolling white sand dunes with pools of bright blue-green water in the hollows between them — The Lençóis Maranhenses, a field of dunes that fills with rain-fed lagoons after the rains of the first half of the year. (Julius Dadalti / Wikimedia Commons)

In the northeastern state of Maranhão, a 1,500-square-kilometre expanse of white sand dunes sits just inland from the coast — and because it rains here, the hollows between the dunes fill with freshwater lagoons, up to 100 metres long and 3 metres deep, filling during the rains of January to June and then slowly drying. The name means "bedsheets", and in 2024 the national park became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The base is the village of Barreirinhas, from where 4x4s run out to the dunes; there are also multi-day guided treks across the sand.

8. Ouro Preto

A hillside town of white colonial houses and baroque church towers under green mountains — Ouro Preto in Minas Gerais, the wealthy centre of an 18th-century gold rush. (Alvesgaspar / Wikimedia Commons)

When gold was found in the hills of Minas Gerais around 1700, Ouro Preto ("black gold") became one of the richest towns in the Americas, and it spent that wealth on gilded churches, many of them carved by the sculptor Aleijadinho, son of a Portuguese master builder and an enslaved African woman, whose work — including his soapstone prophets at nearby Congonhas — is the high point of Brazilian baroque. The steep, cobbled town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

It was also the seat of the Inconfidência, an abortive 1789 independence plot whose leader, Tiradentes, was hanged and quartered; the Inconfidência Museum, in the former municipal palace on Tiradentes Square, tells the story.

9. Brasília

A circular white cathedral formed of curved concrete ribs sweeping up to a crown, with glass between — Oscar Niemeyer's Cathedral of Brasília, one of the monuments of the purpose-built capital inaugurated in 1960. (Arian Zwegers / Wikimedia Commons)

Carved out of the empty central plateau and built in under four years, Brasília was inaugurated as the new capital in 1960 — a complete modernist city planned by Lúcio Costa in the shape of an aeroplane, with the major buildings designed by Oscar Niemeyer. The whole pilot plan is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The set pieces are along the "Monumental Axis": the crown-of-thorns cathedral, the twin-towered National Congress, the Palácio do Planalto, and the Itamaraty palace with its reflecting pool. It is a city best appreciated as architecture rather than as a place to hang around.

10. Chapada Diamantina

Flat-topped table mountains and deep green valleys receding into haze — The tablelands of Chapada Diamantina National Park in the interior of Bahia — an old diamond-mining region. (Jeilsonandrade / Wikimedia Commons)

Inland from Salvador, the Chapada Diamantina is a highland of flat-topped mountains, canyons, caves, and waterfalls — including one of Brazil's highest, the 340-metre Cachoeira da Fumaça — plus cave systems and underground pools lit blue by shafts of sunlight. It was a diamond-rush region in the 19th century; the ghost-town remnants add to the appeal.

The colonial mining town of Lençóis is the base, for day hikes and multi-day treks across the plateau. It is one of Brazil's best walking destinations and still relatively little known abroad.

Brazil is not a single trip. Two or three regions — Rio and Iguaçu, or the northeast coast, or the Pantanal and the Amazon — make a good first visit, with real time for each and internal flights as part of the deal.

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