Scenic route-based navigation directions

To provide navigation directions for a scenic route, a machine learning model is trained using (i) characteristics of road segments that have been assigned a scenic metric and (ii) the scenic metrics for the road segments. In response to a request for navigation directions, a set of candidate routes for navigating from the starting location to the destination location is identified. Then for each road segment within each candidate route, characteristics of the road segment are applied to the machine learning model to generate the scenic metric for the road segment. A route is then selected from the set of candidate routes based at least in part on the scenic metrics of the road segments within the route. A set of navigation directions is provided for presentation on a client device for navigating from the starting location to the destination location via the selected route.