The 19 Most Incredible Caves and Karst Landscapes

The world underground and the strange stone country it makes above: chambers and underground rivers, limestone towers and hidden valleys. These are the atlas’s caves and karst landscapes.

Eisriesenwelt

Werfen, Salzburg, Austria

The largest ice cave on Earth — 42 kilometres of limestone passage in an Alpine cliff, its entrance chambers filled with towering formations of natural ice.

Cave Europe

El Nido & the Bacuit Archipelago

El Nido, Palawan, Philippines

A bay scattered with dozens of jagged limestone islands, hidden lagoons reached through narrow rock gaps, white beaches, and clear turquoise water — one of the most spectacular karst seascapes in the world.

Karst landscape Southeast Asia

Gunung Mulu

Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia

A Bornean rainforest hiding some of the world's greatest caves — including the largest cave chamber on Earth — plus razor-sharp limestone pinnacles rising from the jungle canopy.

Cave Southeast Asia

Hạ Long Bay

Gulf of Tonkin, northeastern Vietnam

A jade-green sea studded with nearly 2,000 limestone karst islands and pillars rising sheer from the water — caves, hidden lagoons, and floating villages in one of the world's most beautiful seascapes.

Karst landscape Southeast Asia

Marble Caves

General Carrera Lake, Aysén, Chile

Swirling caverns of polished marble at the water's edge of a remote Patagonian lake — their blue-and-white walls glowing turquoise with the reflected light of the glacier-fed water.

Cave Latin America

Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng

Quảng Bình Province, Vietnam

An ancient limestone landscape riddled with the world's greatest cave systems — including Sơn Đoòng, the largest cave passage on Earth, big enough to hold its own jungle, river, and clouds.

Cave Southeast Asia

Puerto Princesa Subterranean River

Puerto Princesa, Palawan, Philippines

One of the world's longest navigable underground rivers, winding 8.2 km through a vast limestone cave system beneath a karst mountain range before emptying directly into the West Philippine Sea.

Cave Southeast Asia

The Yucatán Cenotes

Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico

Thousands of natural sinkholes opening into a hidden world of crystal-clear groundwater and flooded caves beneath the Yucatán — sacred to the ancient Maya and among the most beautiful swimming holes on Earth.

Cave North America

Tsingy de Bemaraha

Melaky, western Madagascar

A vast 'forest of stone' — a labyrinth of razor-sharp limestone pinnacles rising in grey blades from the Madagascar wilderness, hiding canyons, caves, and creatures found nowhere else.

Karst landscape Africa

Callao Cave

Peñablanca, Cagayan, Northern Luzon

A vast limestone cave of seven great chambers lit by natural skylights — and the site where the ancient human species Homo luzonensis was discovered, deep in the karst of the Cagayan Valley.

Cave Southeast Asia

Guilin & the Li River Karst

Guangxi, southern China

The landscape of Chinese scroll paintings brought to life — thousands of rounded limestone peaks rising from green plains and the winding Li River, mirrored in still water beneath drifting mist.

Karst landscape East Asia

Kong Lor Cave

Khammouane Province, central Laos

A river cave that tunnels for over seven kilometres straight through a limestone mountain — navigated by longtail boat through pitch darkness, from one green valley to another.

Cave Southeast Asia

Mammoth Cave

Kentucky, USA

The longest cave system known on Earth — over 685 kilometres of mapped passages winding beneath the Kentucky hills, with new miles still being discovered.

Cave North America

Masungi Georeserve

Baras, Rizal, Philippines

A dramatic limestone karst landscape barely 90 minutes from Manila, reborn as a conservation project — jagged rock formations, rope courses, and hanging viewpoints woven through a rainforest being restored tree by tree.

Karst landscape Southeast Asia

Phang Nga Bay

Andaman Sea, southern Thailand

A calm emerald bay between Phuket and Krabi studded with sheer limestone karst islands, sea caves, and hidden tidal lagoons reached by paddling through the rock.

Karst landscape Southeast Asia

Prometheus Cave

Imereti, near Kutaisi, western Georgia

A vast karst cave near Kutaisi, its huge chambers hung with stalactites and curtains of stone, explored on lit walkways and, in part, by boat along an underground river.

Cave Europe

Sagada

Sagada, Mountain Province, Cordillera, Philippines

A cool, pine-clad limestone highland in the heart of the Cordillera, where caves riddle the karst, waterfalls drop into rice terraces, and dawn breaks over a sea of clouds at Kiltepan.

Karst landscape Southeast Asia

The Blue Grotto

Isle of Capri, Campania, Italy

A sea cave on the island of Capri where sunlight passing through an underwater opening fills the whole cavern with an unearthly, glowing electric-blue light.

Cave Europe

Vang Vieng

Vientiane Province, central Laos

A dramatic landscape of sheer limestone karst peaks rising above the Nam Song river and green rice fields, riddled with caves and blue lagoons, in the hills north of Vientiane.

Karst landscape Southeast Asia