The 30 Most Otherworldly Rock Formations on Earth

Stone shaped by wind, water, and deep time into shapes that look designed. From basalt columns to desert arches and fairy chimneys, these are the rock formations of the atlas.

Arches National Park

Utah, USA

The greatest concentration of natural stone arches on Earth — more than 2,000 sandstone spans, fins, and balanced rocks glowing red above the high desert of Utah.

Rock formation North America

Bryce Canyon

Utah, United States

Not really a canyon at all, but a series of vast natural amphitheatres filled with thousands of glowing orange rock spires called hoodoos — the largest concentration of these strange pinnacles on Earth.

Rock formation North America

Bungle Bungle Range

Purnululu, Kimberley, Western Australia

Hundreds of orange-and-black striped sandstone domes rising from the Kimberley outback — a beehive landscape unknown to the wider world until the 1980s.

Rock formation Oceania

Cappadocia

Central Anatolia, Turkey

A dreamlike landscape of 'fairy chimneys' — tapering cones and pinnacles of soft volcanic rock carved by erosion, honeycombed with ancient cave homes and churches, and famous for its dawn balloon flights.

Rock formation Middle East

Chocolate Hills

Bohol, Central Visayas, Philippines

More than 1,200 near-symmetrical grass-covered mounds spread across the interior of Bohol, turning chocolate-brown each dry season — a karst landscape unlike anywhere else on Earth.

Rock formation Southeast Asia

Ennedi Massif

Ennedi, northeastern Chad

A sandstone labyrinth in the heart of the Sahara — natural arches, towers, and canyons hiding permanent water where desert crocodiles survive, thousands of kilometres from any river.

Rock formation Africa

Giant's Causeway

County Antrim, Northern Ireland

Around 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, mostly perfect hexagons, stepping down into the North Atlantic — one of the most remarkable geometric formations in nature.

Rock formation Europe

Monument Valley

Arizona–Utah border, Navajo Nation

Colossal red sandstone buttes standing alone on a desert plain — the defining landscape of the American West, on Navajo land where the mesas rise up to 300 metres from the flats.

Rock formation North America

Uluru

Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Northern Territory, Australia

A colossal sandstone monolith rising abruptly from the flat red heart of Australia — glowing through fiery reds and oranges at sunrise and sunset, and a place of the deepest cultural significance to its Aboriginal custodians.

Rock formation Oceania

Zhangjiajie (Wulingyuan)

Hunan Province, China

A forest of thousands of towering quartzite-sandstone pillars rising hundreds of metres from misty subtropical forest — an ethereal landscape of floating peaks that helped inspire the world of Avatar.

Rock formation East Asia

Zhangye Danxia

Gansu Province, China

Hills painted in stripes of red, orange, gold, and green — a landscape of 'rainbow mountains' where millions of years of layered sediment have been folded and eroded into vivid bands of colour.

Rock formation East Asia

Biri Rock Formations

Biri Island, Northern Samar, Eastern Visayas

Massive sandstone rock formations on a remote island where the Pacific Ocean meets the ferocious San Bernardino Strait — sculpted over millennia into cliffs, arches, and tidal pools battered by giant waves.

Rock formation Southeast Asia

Cliffs of Moher

County Clare, western Ireland

A wall of sheer sea cliffs rising up to 214 metres straight from the wild Atlantic on Ireland's west coast — layered in ancient rock, alive with seabirds, and often wreathed in Atlantic mist and spray.

Rock formation Europe

Creux du Van

Jura Mountains, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

A vast natural rock amphitheatre in the Swiss Jura — a horseshoe of sheer 150-metre limestone cliffs curving nearly a kilometre and a half around a green forested hollow.

Rock formation Europe

Étretat Cliffs

Étretat, Seine-Maritime, Normandy, France

White chalk cliffs on the Normandy coast carved into three natural arches and a lone needle of rock — the seascape Monet painted again and again.

Rock formation Europe

Gotland & the Raukar

Baltic Sea, southeastern Sweden

Sweden's largest island, rimmed by raukar — weathered limestone sea stacks that stand along the shore like a gallery of stone figures carved by the Baltic.

Rock formation Europe

Hell's Gate

Naivasha, Great Rift Valley, Kenya

A dramatic Rift Valley gorge of red cliffs, rock towers, and steaming geothermal vents — one of the few African parks you can explore on foot or by bike among the wildlife.

Rock formation Africa

Jeti-Ögüz Rocks

Jeti-Ögüz District, Issyk-Kul Region, near Karakol, Kyrgyzstan

Sheer cliffs of red conglomerate rising from spruce-covered hills near Lake Issyk-Kul — Kyrgyzstan's 'Seven Bulls'.

Rock formation Central Asia

Matobo Hills

Matabeleland South, Zimbabwe, about 30 km south of Bulawayo

A dense maze of granite domes, kopjes and balancing boulders south of Bulawayo, carved by erosion from Zimbabwe's granite plateau — a World Heritage landscape whose rock shelters hold one of the richest concentrations of rock art in southern Africa.

Rock formation Africa

Meteora

Thessaly, central Greece

A cluster of colossal, sheer rock pillars soaring from the plains of Thessaly — a surreal geological forest of stone towers, several capped by centuries-old monasteries built where the cliffs seem to touch the sky.

Rock formation Europe

Preikestolen

Rogaland, southwestern Norway

A sheer, flat-topped cliff jutting 604 metres straight above the Lysefjord — 'Pulpit Rock,' one of the most spectacular and vertiginous natural viewpoints in the world.

Rock formation Europe

Quebrada de Humahuaca

Jujuy Province, northwestern Argentina

A long, arid mountain valley in Argentina's far northwest, walled by hillsides banded in reds, ochres, greens and purples — a UNESCO-listed cultural landscape carved by the Rio Grande and travelled for ten thousand years.

Rock formation Latin America

Saxon Switzerland

Saxony, eastern Germany

A labyrinth of free-standing sandstone towers, table mountains, and deep ravines above a bend in the River Elbe near Dresden — the birthplace of free climbing.

Rock formation Europe

Sigiriya

Central Province, Sri Lanka

A sheer 200-metre column of ancient volcanic rock rising abruptly from the green plains of central Sri Lanka — a natural monolith crowned by the ruins of a 5th-century sky palace.

Rock formation South Asia

Spitzkoppe

Erongo Region, Western Namibia

The 'Matterhorn of Namibia' — a group of bald granite peaks rising abruptly from the flat Namib plains, glowing orange at dawn and dusk, hung with a natural rock arch and some of the darkest night skies on Earth.

Rock formation Africa

Tassili n'Ajjer

Illizi and Djanet, southeastern Algeria, at the Libyan and Nigerien borders

A sandstone plateau the size of Ireland, eroded into forests of freestanding rock towers and nearly three hundred natural arches — and carrying, in its layers, the record of an ice sheet that once covered the Sahara.

Rock formation Africa

The Edge of the World

Jebel Fihrayn, near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

A dramatic cliff-edge of the Tuwaiq escarpment near Riyadh, where an ancient seabed drops away hundreds of metres to a vast plain that stretches unbroken to the horizon.

Rock formation Middle East

The Twelve Apostles

Great Ocean Road, Victoria, Australia

A row of towering limestone sea stacks rising from the Southern Ocean along Victoria's Great Ocean Road — sculpted from crumbling coastal cliffs by the relentless waves, and constantly, visibly changing.

Rock formation Oceania

Trolltunga

Vestland, western Norway

The 'Troll's Tongue' — a thin slab of rock jutting horizontally into empty air some 700 metres above a fjord lake, at the end of one of Norway's most demanding day hikes.

Rock formation Europe

Þingvellir (Thingvellir)

Þingvellir National Park, Southwest Iceland

A rift valley where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are visibly pulling apart — a landscape of fissures, lava plains, and clear spring-fed water that is also the birthplace of Iceland's parliament.

Rock formation Europe