The Most Beautiful Mountains in Europe

19 places in 11 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Mount Olympus

   Όλυμπος

   Greece · 24.7 km from Katerini40.083° N 22.350° E

   • biosphere reserve

   

   The mountain is formed of marine sediments laid down some 200 million years ago and later sculpted by glaciers, which left high plateaus such as the Muses' Plateau at around 2,550 metres and deep gorges like that of the Enipeas above Litochoro. It became Greece's first national park in 1938, is a biosphere reserve, and in July 2026 the wider area of Mount Olympus was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list as a mixed natural and cultural site. Its flora is exceptional: about 1,700 species and subspecies, around a quarter of all Greek flora, including 23 plants found nowhere else, among them the Ice Age relic Jankaea heldreichii.

   Did you know? Finds made in 1961 on the peak of Agios Antonios confirmed it as the site of an ancient sanctuary of Zeus.

   More about Mount Olympus →

2. 02 Mount Vesuvius

   Vesuvio

   Italy · 15.8 km from Naples40.823° N 14.429° E

   

   The eruption of AD 79 buried Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis and Stabiae. A column of ash, pumice and gas rose to about 33 km, and pyroclastic surges swept down the slopes on the second day. The only eyewitness account to survive is a pair of letters by Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus, describing the black cloud over the bay and the death of his uncle, Pliny the Elder, who had sailed across from Misenum to help and died at Stabiae. The word Plinian, used for violently explosive eruptions everywhere, comes from those letters.

   Did you know? In March 1944, ash and hot tephra wrecked roughly 80 American B-25 bombers parked at an airfield a few kilometres from the volcano's eastern foot.

   More about Mount Vesuvius →

3. 03 Eiger

   Switzerland46.578° N 8.005° E

   

   The north face, the Nordwand, was a different story. Attempts in the 1930s ended in deaths watched through the telescopes of the hotels at Kleine Scheidegg, and the Bernese authorities at one point banned attempts altogether. On 24 July 1938 Anderl Heckmair, Ludwig Vörg, Heinrich Harrer and Fritz Kasparek finally reached the summit, surviving an avalanche on the ice field known as the White Spider; Harrer's book of that name made the face famous worldwide. At least 64 climbers have died on it since 1935, which gave it the grim nickname Mordwand, "murder wall".

   Did you know? In 1936 Toni Kurz survived an avalanche that killed his three companions, then froze to death on the rope just metres from his would-be rescuers.

   More about Eiger →

4. 04 Teide

   Spain28.273° N 16.644° W

   

   Teide is an active volcano. Its most recent eruption, in 1909, came from the Chinyero vent on the north-west rift, and the Narices del Teide eruption of 1798 poured lava from the flank of Pico Viejo. Because towns such as Garachico, Icod de los Vinos and Puerto de la Cruz lie below it, the United Nations listed it among its Decade Volcanoes for special study. For the Guanches, the island's people before the Spanish conquest of 1496, the mountain was sacred and the home of Guayota, a demon often pictured as a black dog; sailors on Columbus's first voyage in 1492 reported fire on the peak.

   Did you know? In 1706 lava from the Montañas Negras vent on the north-west rift destroyed Garachico, then Tenerife's main port.

   More about Teide →

5. 05 Matterhorn

   Switzerland · 37.5 km from Sion45.976° N 7.659° E

   

   Geologically the peak is a remnant of Africa. Its gneiss comes from the Dent Blanche nappe, fragments of the African plate that now lie over ophiolites and sediments of the Penninic nappes, and its horn shape was carved by several glaciers eroding cirques into it from different sides at once. Only small patches of snow and ice cling to the faces; avalanches strip them regularly and feed the glaciers at the foot of each wall.

   Did you know? Lord Francis Douglas, one of the four men killed on the 1865 descent, was never found; the other three bodies were recovered from the glacier below.

   More about Matterhorn →

6. 06 Mont Blanc

   France · 36.6 km from Aosta45.833° N 6.865° E

   

   The first recorded ascent, on 8 August 1786 by Jacques Balmat and the doctor Michel-Gabriel Paccard, answered a reward offered by the Swiss naturalist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure and is traditionally taken as the birth of modern mountaineering. Today around 20,000 people a year climb to the top. The most popular route, the Goûter route, usually takes two days: climbers ride the Tramway du Mont-Blanc from Saint-Gervais to the Nid d'Aigle and pass the Tête Rousse and Goûter huts on the way. It is technically easy but arduous, and one stretch is notoriously dangerous: between the Tête Rousse and Goûter refuges, around the Goûter couloir, 74 people died between 1990 and 2011.

   Did you know? In 1893 an observatory was built on the summit ice; by 1906 it was leaning badly and a crevasse soon opened beneath it.

   More about Mont Blanc →

7. 07 Mount Etna

   Etna

   Italy · 28.9 km from Catania37.751° N 14.993° E

   

   The Greeks and Romans placed the forge of Hephaestus, or Vulcan, beneath the mountain, and said Zeus had trapped the monster Typhon under it. The volcano's real history is no less dramatic. Thousands of years ago its eastern flank collapsed in a giant landslide, leaving the Valle del Bove, the Valley of the Ox, a great depression into which many recent lava flows have run; research published in 2006 dated the collapse to about 8,000 years ago. In 1669 the volcano's most destructive eruption in historical times sent lava through at least ten villages and up to the walls of Catania, where it poured around the city into the sea and filled the harbour.

   Did you know? In 1992 engineers blew up a lava tube with explosives to divert a flow into an artificial channel away from the town of Zafferana.

   More about Mount Etna →

8. 08 Vulcano

   Isola di Vulcano

   Italy38.404° N 14.966° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The main event is the Gran Cratere, the rim of the Fossa cone behind the port. Its last eruption, from 1888 to 1890, was studied by the geologist Giuseppe Mercalli, and the explosive, cannon-like blasts he described gave science the term "Vulcanian eruption". A marked trail climbs about 390 m to the rim, where fumaroles steam around the crater — sulphur was mined on the island from Roman times until the late 19th century; allow roughly three hours there and back, start early in summer, and bring water.

   More about Vulcano →

9. 09 Mount Kazbek

   Georgia42.697° N 44.519° E

   

   The upper mountain is wrapped in ice. Several glaciers flow from the summit dome — the Gergeti on the south-east, the Devdoraki creeping down the north-eastern slope into a narrow gorge, and others on every side. The Devdoraki is also a reminder that the mountain is alive: a collapse of ice and rock in 2014 sent a deadly debris flow into the valley below. From the south the classic view frames Kazbek behind the small fourteenth-century Gergeti Trinity Church, which sits alone on a green shoulder at about 2,170 metres above the town of Stepantsminda — a composition of stone chapel, grass and snow that has become one of the defining images of the Caucasus.

   Did you know? A 2019 expedition placed a GPS receiver on the summit for the first time and measured its height as 5,053.9 metres, accurate to millimetres.

   More about Mount Kazbek →

10. 10 Montagne Sainte-Victoire

    France · 15.9 km from Aix-en-Provence43.539° N 5.645° E

    

    The mountain belongs to the painter Paul Cézanne as much as to geography. In 1878 he wrote to Émile Zola praising the view of it from the train crossing the Arc valley as a "beautiful motif", and around then he began the long series in which the ridge of his native Aix appears again and again: 87 works in all, seen from the Arc valley with its railway viaduct, from the Bibémus quarry and from the hill of Les Lauves above the town, the mountain increasingly broken down into planes and patches of colour.

    Did you know? A satellite study of 1993-2003 suggested that the western end of the mountain was still rising, by about 7 millimetres a year.

    More about Montagne Sainte-Victoire →

11. 11 Scottish Highlands

    United Kingdom57.120° N 4.710° W

    

    At the western end of the Grampians, above Fort William, Ben Nevis rises to 1,345 m, the highest point in the British Isles; its north face carries cliffs some 700 m high, and the ruins of a summit observatory staffed from 1883 to 1904 still stand on the stony plateau. 5 km long through volcanic rock, narrowing sharply at its pass; it is regarded as the cradle of Scottish mountaineering, and its name is inseparable from the massacre of 13 February 1692, when government troops killed thirty-eight men of the MacDonalds of Glencoe who had sheltered them. Along the Great Glen itself, Loch Ness stretches for about 37 km and holds more water than all the lakes of England and Wales together.

    Did you know? After the 1745 rising the government banned the wearing of tartan, yet within decades tartan and the kilt became fashionable among elites across Europe.

    More about Scottish Highlands →

12. 12 Tre Cime di Lavaredo

    Italy46.619° N 12.306° E

    

    The towers have two faces. From the south, where the road arrives, they show their broad shoulders above scree. The celebrated view opens from the north, around the Rifugio Locatelli (Dreizinnenhütte, 2,438 m), where the three peaks stand in a single composition, sheer and dark against the evening sky, their bases lost in slopes of grey debris. The circuit around them, starting at the Rifugio Auronzo at 2,320 metres, covers roughly nine to ten kilometres and a few hundred metres of ascent, and it shows the massif changing shape from every side.

    Did you know? Riccardo Cassin and Vittorio Ratti made the first ascent of the overhanging north face of Cima Ovest in 1935.

    More about Tre Cime di Lavaredo →

13. 13 Seiser Alm (Alpe di Siusi)

    Alpe di Siusi

    Italy · 22.3 km from Bolzano46.541° N 11.645° E

    

    The mountains around it are the real frame. To the south-west rises the Schlern, whose unmistakable profile is one of the best known silhouettes of the Dolomites; to the east stands the Langkofel group, and further away the Sella group, the Rosengarten and the glacier of the Marmolada. The contrast between gentle meadow and vertical rock is what makes the view unforgettable. Since 1975 the eastern part of the Alm has been protected within the Schlern nature park.

    Did you know? The medieval poet and diplomat Oswald von Wolkenstein mentioned the Seiser Alm in one of his songs, written in the first quarter of the 15th century.

    More about Seiser Alm (Alpe di Siusi) →

14. 14 Ushba

    Georgia43.124° N 42.660° E

    

    The north summit was first reached in 1888 by an English party with the Swiss guide Ulrich Almer. The south summit held out until 26 July 1903, when it was climbed by a German, Swiss and Austrian expedition led by Willi Rickmer Rickmers. The standard route to the north summit, graded AD+, climbs the northeast ridge from the Russian side of the range, since the border runs just north of the mountain; on the Georgian side, the south summit is guarded by walls with routes at the extreme ED grade. In Soviet times Ushba ranked among the most prestigious and difficult objectives in the Union, alongside peaks such as Free Korea Peak in Kyrgyzstan.

    Did you know? The north summit fell on the fourth attempt in 1888, climbed by way of the Gul glacier.

    More about Ushba →

15. 15 Ben Bulben

    Ireland · 11.1 km from Sligo54.367° N 8.467° W

    

    The rock tells an older story still. The upper cliffs are formed of hard Dartry Limestone, laid down in a shallow sea some 345 to 330 million years ago, during the Carboniferous; below it lie the thinner Glencar Limestone and the soft Benbulben Shale of the lower slopes, all of them full of fossil shells, and in the shale, corals. The cold summit plateau holds a remarkable cluster of Arctic–alpine plants, among them fringed sandwort, which grows nowhere else in Ireland and which research in 2012 showed has been present here since the last Ice Age. The mountain is also home to red-billed choughs.

    Did you know? The cluster of Arctic-alpine plants on the plateau is thought to be around 100,000 years old, surviving here since before the last glaciers retreated.

    More about Ben Bulben →

16. 16 Kjeragbolten

    Norway59.034° N 6.593° E

    

    For most of that time essentially nobody stood on it, since the surrounding cliffs were not seriously climbed until fairly recently: a team of four climbers made the first documented ascent of the Kjerag wall in 1985, working entirely from photographs because they abseiled in without ever seeing the route from below first. The boulder's jump from obscure alpine feature to globally recognised photo stop happened later and fast, driven largely by a single piece of internet culture — a 2006 viral video of a man dancing on top of the rock, which put the image in front of an audience that had nothing to do with mountaineering.

    Did you know? Beneath the boulder there is a sheer drop of about 241 metres, followed by a further steep fall of over 700 metres to the Lysefjord.

    More about Kjeragbolten →

17. 17 Lapporten

    Sweden68.268° N 18.977° E

    

    The name means "the Lapland Gate" in Swedish. In Northern Sami the valley is Čuonjávággi, "Goose Valley", and the small lake that lies in its floor, at about 950 metres above sea level, is Čuonjájávri, "Goose Lake"; its waters drain northwest towards Torneträsk. The gate is framed by the mountains Nissuntjårro on the southwest side and Tjuonatjåkka on the northeast, both rising to well over 1,500 metres. The symmetry that makes the view so striking is the work of glacial ice, which flowed through the valley during the ice ages and ground its floor and walls into the classic trough profile of a glaciated valley.

    Did you know? The two sides of the gate are unequal: Nissuntjårro rises to about 1,738 metres, Tjuonatjåkka to about 1,554 metres.

    More about Lapporten →

18. 18 Vestrahorn

    Iceland64.280° N 14.940° W

    

    The drama is geological. Most Icelandic mountains are built of basalt, but Vestrahorn is one of the few made largely of gabbro, a coarse-grained rock that cooled slowly deep underground, together with granophyre. These intrusions date back about 6.6 million years and were pushed into older basalt; erosion has since stripped the softer cover away and carved the harder rock into the sharp pinnacles visible today. Eastwards the ridge continues towards the sea as Brunnhorn, whose own crest forms a second, lower row of teeth.

    Did you know? Some gabbro boulders lying at the foot of the mountain and on the shore are as big as five-storey apartment blocks.

    More about Vestrahorn →

19. 19 Segla

    Norway · 33.9 km from Finnsnes69.507° N 17.595° E

    

    Senja itself is the second largest island in mainland Norway, around 1,586 square kilometres, and its outer side is a coast of steep alpine peaks, narrow fjords and small fishing villages. Segla stands on one of the northern headlands, just west of the village of Fjordgård. From the summit the view takes in fjords, open sea and the jagged ridges of northern Senja; on the Mefjorden side the drop runs roughly 600 metres down to the water.

    Did you know? The Horns of Segla took six pitches and was graded Scottish IX,10; the team only reached the summit after nightfall.

    More about Segla →