The Most Beautiful Canyons and Gorges in Europe

27 places in 12 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Samariá Gorge National Park

   Φαράγγι της Σαμαριάς

   Greece · 27.2 km from Chania35.271° N 23.961° E

   • biosphere reserve

   

   Its climax is the Portes, the Gates, near the southern end: here the walls close in to only three or four metres apart while rising for hundreds of metres overhead, and the stream often fills the whole passage. Midway down lies the abandoned village of Samariá, whose last inhabitants left in 1962 when the national park was created; the gorge takes its name from the village's old church of Óssia María. In Ottoman times the ravine was a refuge for rebels and for local people in flight.

   Did you know? By 1960 fewer than 200 kri-kri goats survived, and saving them was one of the main reasons the gorge became a national park in 1962.

   More about Samariá Gorge National Park →

2. 02 Verdon Gorge

   Gorges du Verdon

   France43.738° N 6.364° E

   

   Its history is geological first. The limestone was laid down in warm Jurassic seas, lifted and fractured when the Alps rose, then scoured by glaciers and by meltwater torrents; the river kept cutting as the land rose. In places the walls stand only six metres apart at water level while the rims are more than a kilometre from each other. The gorge divides into a "pre-gorge" below Castellane, the deepest section to l'Imbut — where the Verdon disappears for a stretch under enormous fallen blocks — and a final canyon down to the Galetas bridge, where boats and kayaks glide in from the lake.

   Did you know? The reintroduced vulture colony has grown to around 200 breeding pairs.

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3. 03 Caminito del Rey

   Spain · 38.2 km from Málaga36.916° N 4.773° W

   

   For much of the 20th century it was left to decay. Sections of concrete fell away, leaving bare rails and gaps over the drop, and the path acquired a reputation as one of the most dangerous walks in the world; after fatal accidents around 2000 its ends were closed off. The ruined walkway also had a screen career, appearing in films including Von Ryan's Express. In 2011 the regional government approved a restoration of about nine million euros, and on 29 March 2015 a new boardwalk opened, laid just above the remains of the old one – so as you walk, you can look down at the crumbling concrete and bare rails of the original below your feet.

   Did you know? With its access paths, the original route built for the hydroelectric company ran to about 7.7 km, of which roughly 3 km clung to the cliffs.

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4. 04 Tara River Canyon

   Кањон реке Таре

   Montenegro43.251° N 19.008° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   What makes the gorge memorable is the water itself. The river is prized for the quality of its water, and it is fed less by tributaries than by powerful springs along its banks: at Bučevica cave a stream drops into the Tara from more than thirty metres up, spreading more than 150 metres wide, and the Bajlovića Sige spring pours in several hundred litres a second. Dozens of rapids and more than forty cascades give the river its voice, which carries up to the rim. The walls hold rocky terraces, pebble beaches and more than eighty large caves, and the river is one of Europe's key spawning grounds for the huchen, the giant Danube salmon.

   Did you know? At its deepest point the canyon drops about 1,333 metres, and its average depth is a little over 1,000 metres.

   More about Tara River Canyon →

5. 05 Vikos Gorge

   Φαράγγι του Βίκου

   Greece · 30.5 km from Ioannina39.929° N 20.741° E

   

   The gorge lies at the heart of the Vikos–Aoös National Park, in the Zagori region. Its main section runs from between the villages of Vitsa and Koukouli to the village of Vikos, and for most of its length the stream on its floor is seasonal; only toward the end do the springs of the Voidomatis River rise and give it a permanent flow. Because the gorge slices so deep into the mountain, its walls expose a whole sequence of limestone: young Eocene rock at the top, older layers below, and grey Jurassic dolomite in the depths. Glaciers reached down close to the valley floor in the Pleistocene, and deposits they left behind still fill parts of the Voidomatis valley.

   Did you know? The Voidomatis, the river born at the foot of the gorge, takes its name from the phrase 'eye of the ox', a nod to its clear blue water.

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6. 06 Gorges du Tarn

   France44.355° N 3.562° E

   

   The scenery is written in the rock. When the Alps were being raised, the southern edge of the Massif Central was pushed up as well, and the Tarn, the Jonte and the Dourbie cut deep gorges into the rising limestone. In the lower gorges the layers are easy to read: dolomite ledges at the base, a sloping middle band, and vertical cliffs on top. Upstream, faults complicate the picture and feed powerful springs; near Sainte-Enimie the Burle and Coussac springs pour out of the rock, the Coussac falling into the Tarn as a waterfall, and some forty resurgences are counted along the river. Traces of ancient volcanoes appear too, in basalt near Eglazines.

   Did you know? The plateaux on either side were lifted during the Miocene by shock waves of the Alpine uplift, reaching 1,247 metres at Mont Gargo on the Causse Méjean.

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7. 07 Partnach Gorge

   Partnachklamm

   Germany · 29.6 km from Innsbruck47.463° N 11.124° E

   

   Before it became a sight, the gorge was a workplace. Timber felled in the valleys above was sent down the Partnach to the valley floor, and the only way to follow it was along a precarious wooden walkway. The present path was cut into the rock around 1910 to 1912, and in 1912 the gorge was declared a natural monument. On 1 June 1991 some 5,000 cubic metres of rock broke away from one wall; rather than close the gorge, engineers blasted a 108-metre gallery through the rock to carry the path around the debris.

   Did you know? Men who freed jammed logs in the gorge sometimes lost their lives, and painted memorial panels at a wayside cross near the entrance recall them.

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8. 08 Tajo de Ronda

   Spain · 35.3 km from Marbella36.740° N 5.164° W

   

   Three bridges tie the town together across the Tajo and the ravine below it. The most famous, the Puente Nuevo, was completed in 1793 after more than three decades of work, to a design by José Martín de Aldehuela; an earlier single-arch bridge built on the same spot had collapsed in 1741, killing some fifty people. The new stone bridge rises from the bottom of the gorge, and a chamber above its central arch was used over the centuries for various purposes, including as a prison. Downstream, the smaller Puente Viejo and the older bridge often called Roman or Arab cross the river where the gorge opens out.

   Did you know? The Puente Nuevo took 34 years to build, from 1759 to 1793, under the chief builder Juan Antonio Díaz Machuca.

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9. 09 Macocha Gorge

   Macocha

   Czech Republic · 21.1 km from Brno49.373° N 16.730° E

   

   The name comes from the Czech word for stepmother. According to legend, which was first written down in 1793, a stepmother threw her stepson into the chasm; the boy survived by catching on the rock just below the edge, and the villagers who rescued him threw her in instead. The abyss is mentioned in documents from 1663, and the first person known to have reached the bottom was Lazar Schopper in 1723. Scientific descents followed from 1784, and the karst researcher Karel Absolon began a new era of exploration in 1901. The Punkva Caves were discovered in 1909, the bottom of the abyss was linked by a dry route in 1914, and the route along the underground river was opened in 1933.

   Did you know? The earliest written mention of the abyss, in 1663, came from Martin Alexander Vigsius, a monk of the Zábrdovice monastery.

   More about Macocha Gorge →

10. 10 Liechtensteinklamm

    Austria47.311° N 13.191° E

    

    The gorge runs for about four kilometres, of which roughly one kilometre has been made accessible on wooden walkways fixed to the rock walls. The rock is a metamorphic limestone known locally as Klammkalk, part of the Penninic units exposed at the northern edge of the Tauern Window, a window through the higher rock layers of the Alps into deeper ones beneath. The whole cleft is the product of the stream cutting down through this rock over thousands of years. The gorge is protected as a natural monument covering about 25 hectares.

    Did you know? The same rebuilding added three tunnels, four viewing galleries and about 1,100 metres of rockfall netting to the gorge.

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11. 11 Ruinaulta

    Switzerland · 14.9 km from Chur46.808° N 9.315° E

    

    The name is Romansh — ruina for the scree and broken rock, aulta for high — and it describes the landscape precisely. The walls are not solid bedrock but compacted landslide material, mostly shattered limestone, and erosion has sculpted them into towers, pinnacles and sharp gullies that glow white and ochre in the sun. Forest clings to every ledge, and at the bottom the milky green river winds in loops over gravel banks. There is no road along the floor: the only continuous route through the gorge is the Rhaetian Railway, which follows the river past small halts at Trin, Versam-Safien and Valendas-Sagogn.

    Did you know? The rockslide moved roughly as much rock as there is water in Lake Lucerne, about 300 times the volume of the historic Swiss landslide at Goldau.

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12. 12 Alcantara Gorges

    Gole dell'Alcantara

    Italy37.880° N 15.173° E

    

    The gorge is the work of fire and water together. Lava flows from vents on the lower slopes of Mount Etna repeatedly poured into the river valley, blocking and rerouting the Alcantara. Where the molten rock met the river it cooled quickly and contracted into regular prisms, mostly five- and six-sided; in some places these columns reach 30 metres. Over thousands of years the river then cut back down through the lava, exposing the cooled flows in its walls — several of them can be seen lying one on top of another on the left bank. The main gorge, at Fondaco Motta in the commune of Motta Camastra, runs for more than 6 km, and the first stretch can be explored on foot along the riverbed.

    Did you know? The oldest of these lava flows travelled all the way to the sea at Capo Schisò.

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13. 13 Fjaðrárgljúfur

    Iceland63.777° N 18.176° W

    

    The rock is palagonite, a tuff formed when volcanoes erupted under glacial ice during the cold phases of the Ice Age, and is thought to be about two million years old. The canyon itself is far younger. At the end of the last glaciation, roughly nine thousand years ago, a lake dammed behind a band of harder rock drained through it, and the rushing meltwater tore a deep channel into the soft palagonite. Terraces along both sides of the valley still mark the lake's former level. The Fjaðrá, which rises on Geirlandshraun, now trickles along the bottom of that great cut before joining the Skaftá.

    Did you know? Justin Bieber filmed the video for his 2015 song 'I'll Show You' in the canyon; by 2019 it had passed 440 million views on YouTube.

    More about Fjaðrárgljúfur →

14. 14 Almannagjá

    Iceland · 37 km from Selfoss64.261° N 21.122° W

    

    The chasm is also the backdrop to the beginning of Icelandic history. From 930 until 1798 the Althing, the general assembly of the island's free men, met each summer at Þingvellir — the name means "assembly plains". The Lögberg, or Law Rock, from which the elected lawspeaker recited the law and where anyone could address the gathering, stood close by; its exact position is uncertain, and one of the suggested sites lies against the rock wall of Almannagjá itself.

    Did you know? Since lava filled the valley about 10,000 years ago, the rift between Almannagjá and Heiðargjá has widened by about 70 metres and sunk about 40 metres.

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15. 15 Martvili Canyon Natural Monument

    Georgia · 37.1 km from Kutaisi42.456° N 42.376° E

    

    The limestone through which the river has cut was laid down in the Mesozoic and Paleocene, and the canyon is thought to have opened up along a line weakened by a strong earthquake, which the Abasha then deepened by erosion. The rock has proved rich in traces of the distant past. Expeditions from Ilia State University have recorded around twenty dinosaur footprints from the Late Cretaceous, along with fossilised marine creatures, and caves in the area have yielded evidence of prehistoric people. The water stays cold throughout the year.

    Did you know? Ammonites, nautiloids, brachiopods and sea urchins in the rock show that this green gorge was once the floor of a warm sea.

    More about Martvili Canyon Natural Monument →

16. 16 Cirque de Navacelles

    France43.893° N 3.510° E

    

    The plateaus are made of Jurassic marine limestone, alternating with dolomite and marl. Faulting fractured the uplifted plateau, and during the Pleistocene the Vis wound in lazy meanders across a flat stretch of its course before cutting down into the rock. At Navacelles the neck of one loop was breached around 6,000 years ago, helped by a build-up of tufa that had raised the riverbed; the river then incised the tufa downstream, fixing its new short course and leaving the old loop dry. The cut-off meander became an oxbow lake that later filled with silt and peat, creating the only arable land for miles around.

    Did you know? The spring that feeds the Vis has occasionally stopped flowing: locals recall it running dry for 24 hours in 1890 and for a few hours in 1922, 1927 and 1961.

    More about Cirque de Navacelles →

17. 17 Trou de Bozouls

    France44.472° N 2.718° E

    

    The canyon was carved over a very long time as the river cut down through soft Jurassic limestone, its meander biting ever deeper into the plateau. On the floor of the gorge the Dourdou drops over a small waterfall into a pool known as the Gourg d'Enfer, the Hell's Pool, before winding round the base of the spur. The steep walls are banded with layers of stone and softened by trees, and the gorge is protected as a sensitive natural area.

    Did you know? The river Dourdou carved the canyon into the Jurassic limestone of the Causse Comtal plateau.

    More about Trou de Bozouls →

18. 18 Cares Trail

    Ruta del Cares

    Spain43.239° N 4.890° W

    

    The path exists because of a power station. Between 1915 and 1921 workers blasted a ledge through the gorge to build a long water channel feeding the hydroelectric plant at Camarmeña–Poncebos; the terrain was so steep that much of the work was done with dynamite by men hanging from ropes. Some 500 people took part, many of them from Galicia, and eleven died, mostly in falls. Between 1945 and 1950 the narrow maintenance path was widened to around two metres and turned into the route used today.

    Did you know? From the village of Camarmeña the channel's water plunges 230 metres through twin pipes to the turbines of the Poncebos power station.

    More about Cares Trail →

19. 19 Osum Canyon

    Kanionet e Osumit

    Albania · 5.5 km from Çorovodë40.470° N 20.255° E

    

    The canyon is thought to have formed over two to three million years through water erosion, possibly as an underground river whose roof later fell in. The process left walls riddled with small caves and passages, and certain rock shapes have earned their own names, among them the Cathedral, the Eye and the Demon's Door. Mediterranean vegetation clings to the ledges, and the shaded gorge supports a varied plant and animal life. The canyon has a body of local legend too, with stories attached to places such as Mulliri i Babait and Vrima e Nuses.

    Did you know? The cliffs are almost pillar-like and vertical, yet their limestone is laid down in clearly visible horizontal beds.

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20. 20 Congost de Mont-rebei

    Desfiladero de Montrebei

    Spain42.079° N 0.681° E

    

    The river divides the Montsec d'Ares on the Catalan side from the Montsec de l'Estall on the Aragonese side, and the gorge touches three municipalities: Àger and Sant Esteve de la Sarga in Catalonia, and Viacamp i Lliterà in Aragon. On the Catalan wall a path has been cut into the rock itself, in some places running through short tunnels, high above the water and without railings. Since 2013 the Montfalcó walkways, wooden stairways bolted to the Aragonese cliffs, have linked the two sides along a route of about four kilometres, making it possible to walk from one region to the other through the heart of the gorge.

    Did you know? On the Montfalcó route, a suspension footbridge about 35 metres long crosses the reservoir between Aragon and Catalonia.

    More about Congost de Mont-rebei →

21. 21 Gorropu Gorge

    Gola di Gorropu

    Italy40.185° N 9.502° E

    

    The canyon began along a fault line and was deepened by the steady work of the Flumineddu. Fossils embedded in the rock show that the limestone formed on the sea floor, in a span roughly between 190 and 60 million years ago, long before it was lifted into mountains. Inside the gorge the riverbed is choked with enormous pale boulders, and the light changes quickly as the walls close in overhead.

    Did you know? The canyon once had a defensive role: most nearby Nuragic villages, giants' tombs and walls sit on higher ground set back from the gorge.

    More about Gorropu Gorge →

22. 22 Ásbyrgi

    Iceland66.014° N 16.503° W

    

    Its shape looks so deliberate that Norse tradition explained it as a hoofprint. According to the legend, Odin's eight-legged horse Sleipnir touched down here with one foot, and the canyon has been known as Sleipnir's footprint ever since. Geology tells a more violent story. After the last ice age, the glacial river Jökulsá á Fjöllum was swollen by catastrophic glacial floods, and the torrents carved the canyon in two main episodes, around 8,000 to 10,000 years ago and again about 3,000 years ago. The river then shifted its course and now flows about 2 km to the east, leaving Ásbyrgi dry, with only a small pond, Botnstjörn, at the foot of the innermost cliffs.

    Did you know? Stóravíti, the shield volcano that produced that lava, is the largest in Iceland by volume of erupted material.

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23. 23 Jökulsárgljúfur

    Iceland65.929° N 16.537° W

    

    The canyon is young by geological standards. Between about nine and eight thousand years ago, volcanic fissures nearby poured out thick sheets of lava. After the last Ice Age, as the great Vatnajökull ice cap far to the south retreated, sudden glacial outburst floods released by eruptions beneath the ice surged down the river with enormous force, cutting through the lava layers in a matter of days rather than millennia. The floods left behind a gallery of strange forms.

    Did you know? Dettifoss, at the head of the canyon, drops 44 metres and is often called Europe's most powerful waterfall.

    More about Jökulsárgljúfur →

24. 24 Nevidio Canyon

    Кањон Невидио

    Montenegro42.987° N 19.067° E

    

    The canyon is short but extreme. 7 km, between an entrance at around 935 metres above sea level and an exit at about 810 metres, while the cliffs above it rise some 400 to 450 metres. The Komarnica, a tributary of the Piva, has worked its way down into a valley first shaped by ice: during the Pleistocene, glaciers flowed off the Durmitor massif along this valley, the largest of them reaching some 15 km in length, and when they melted the river took over the trench they had left. The result is a narrow, twisting passage of polished limestone, cold pools and short drops, with the Grabovnica waterfall pouring in about a hundred metres before the entrance on its northern side.

    Did you know? The notorious "Kamikaze Gate" is a passage about 80 metres long where the walls squeeze together to a slit just a couple of hands wide.

    More about Nevidio Canyon →

25. 25 Masca Gorge

    Barranco de Masca

    Spain28.295° N 16.851° W

    

    The Teno massif is a volcanic block built in the Miocene from countless basaltic lava flows. In the walls of the gorge these flows are clearly visible as thin, steeply tilted layers, most less than a metre thick, often of rough, scoriaceous rock. They are cut through by swarms of dykes, sheets of once-molten rock that forced their way up through cracks and now stand out as dark ribs across the cliffs. One feature has a name of its own among geologists: the Masca unconformity, a band of jumbled breccia ten to fifteen metres thick that tilts steeply northward and marks a break in the long history of eruptions that built the massif.

    Did you know? For centuries the village's only link with the rest of the island was a footpath known as the Camino de los Guanches, leading to Santiago del Teide.

    More about Masca Gorge →

26. 26 Reculée de Baume-les-Messieurs

    France46.733° N 5.639° E

    

    The landscape is cut into layers laid down in the Triassic and Jurassic periods. Hard Middle Jurassic limestone forms the vertical cornices at the top; softer marls from the Lower Jurassic and Triassic below give gentler slopes, where vines grow. 5 km, each between a few hundred metres and more than a kilometre wide. The Seille rises in the cirque of Ladoye at the head of the northern arm, and the Dard, emerging from the rock at the foot of the cliffs, joins it at the village.

    Did you know? The caves were first explored in the early seventeenth century and have been open to the public since 1901.

    More about Reculée de Baume-les-Messieurs →

27. 27 Stuðlagil

    Iceland65.163° N 15.307° W

    

    The columns are the product of thick lava flows that cooled slowly and contracted evenly, cracking into regular polygons, and in Stuðlagil they appear in unusual variety – straight colonnades, tilted bundles and rosettes – with dark rock against bright moss on the rims. The colour of the river is the other half of the spectacle. In early summer, fine glacial silt held in the water gives it a bluish-green, almost turquoise cast against the grey and bronze of the stone. From around August into October the Hálslón reservoir upstream overflows, and the river turns a muddy grey-brown, so the canyon has two quite different faces depending on the month.

    Did you know? The river's average flow dropped from roughly 205 to about 95 cubic metres per second after the Kárahnjúkar project diverted it.

    More about Stuðlagil →