This is a great question, and there is actually an ERC (European Research Council) project out of Aarhus that is dealing with travel accounts in the ancient world that started this year (https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/projects/an-intersectional-analysis-of-ancient-jewish-travel-narratives-erc(e3f351ec-9c78-499e-beaa-588031fdd1ec).html). Their question is a bit narrower than this, but many of the travel accounts they will study deal with description of landscape and major architectural sites.

I can speak from my field of expertise in the Hellenistic world, that there are a wide array of examples where writers remark on both the natural and artefactual beauty of lands they have visited or heard tell of. The most prominent of these ancient sources is of course Herodotus’ Histories. This, of course, deals with some of the curious practices of the various peoples of the Persian empire, but especially in Books I and II treats some natural and artefactual phenomena in Egypt and Mesopotamia too.

Another source, perhaps better known for its treatment of the myth of the translation of the Jewish law into Greek is the Letter of Aristeas. Although this text, written in the voice of an Egyptian Greek living in Alexandria, is likely composed by an Egyptian Jew, it includes a travel account concerning the land of Judea and especially the city of Jerusalem. In this account, it speaks admirably of the layout of the country, the city, and the Jerusalem temple as a place of worship.

A third example of this sort of admiration comes from Pliny the Elder, who in his Natural History contains various passages about natural and artefactual wonders throughout the various subjects that enter into his narrative.

It is important to note that all three of these sources mention the wonders not in isolation, but as a way of praising the character of a people or their way of life. In the ancient Mediterranean world, such traits were thought to be inseparable from the environment in which the people arose. So, when reading such accounts of admiration of the land or the major sites, it is often worthwhile to attempt to understand what these are believed to communicate about the people. Often they will reveal more about the values of the author/scribe than they will about the place being described. But they are interesting nonetheless.