Superlative · rock formations
The 14 Most Beautiful Rock Formations on Earth
14 places · every one real, mapped, and worth the trip
Wind, water, and deep time carve stone into forms that look designed — pillars and pinnacles, hexagonal columns, striped hills, and monoliths that rise alone from flat plains. These are the places where geology becomes spectacle.
This is our editors' pick of the most beautiful rock formations on Earth, drawn from six continents. It isn't a strict ranking, but each entry is a real, mapped place with an honest guide to reaching it and the light that shows it at its best.
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Uluru The great monolith
Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Northern Territory, Australia
A single vast sandstone dome rising from the red heart of Australia, held by its Anangu custodians and glowing deep crimson at sunrise and sunset.
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Cappadocia Fairy chimneys
Central Anatolia, Turkey
A surreal valley of tapering volcanic rock cones and cave dwellings in central Turkey, most magical under a dawn sky full of balloons.
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Zhangye Danxia
Gansu Province, China
Rainbow-striped sandstone hills in Gansu, China, banded red, orange, and gold by millions of years of mineral layering.
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Giant's Causeway
County Antrim, Northern Ireland
Some 40,000 interlocking basalt columns stepping into the sea on the coast of Northern Ireland, born of an ancient lava flow.
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Monument Valley
Arizona–Utah border, Navajo Nation
Red sandstone buttes and mesas on the Navajo Nation, the archetypal landscape of the American West.
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Meteora
Thessaly, central Greece
Sheer sandstone pillars in central Greece topped by Byzantine monasteries that seem to float above the plain at dawn.
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Preikestolen
Rogaland, southwestern Norway
A flat, 604-metre cliff of rock jutting over a Norwegian fjord — one of the world's great natural viewing platforms.
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Chocolate Hills
Bohol, Central Visayas, Philippines
More than a thousand near-symmetrical grassy mounds across Bohol in the Philippines that turn cocoa-brown in the dry season.
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Trolltunga
Vestland, western Norway
A thin tongue of rock jutting horizontally into space above a Norwegian fjord-lake, the reward at the end of a long hike.
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Bryce Canyon
Utah, United States
A natural amphitheatre of thousands of orange hoodoos in Utah, glowing at sunrise beneath the high plateau rim.
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Spitzkoppe
Erongo Region, Western Namibia
A cluster of bald granite peaks rising from the Namib plain, ancient rock arches and San paintings glowing gold at last light.
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Cliffs of Moher
County Clare, western Ireland
A wall of dark sea cliffs falling 200 metres into the Atlantic on Ireland's west coast, alive with seabirds.
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Arches National Park
Utah, USA
More than 2,000 natural sandstone arches in Utah, including the free-standing Delicate Arch framed against distant peaks.
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Zhangjiajie (Wulingyuan)
Hunan Province, China
Thousands of quartzite sandstone towers rising out of the mist in Hunan, the pillars that inspired Avatar's floating mountains.
Rock formations live and die by the light. Most of these reward the low, warm sun of early morning or late afternoon, when texture and colour come alive — and several are at their most atmospheric with a little mist or cloud. Each guide notes the best time to see it.
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