The Most Beautiful Natural Arches in Europe

12 places in 9 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Hvítserkur

   Iceland65.606° N 20.635° W

   

   Local tradition holds that Hvítserkur is a troll who set out to destroy the monastery at Þingeyrar across the bay and was caught by the rising sun and turned to stone. The story has a curious modern sequel: in the middle of the 20th century, worried that the sea would bring the "troll" down, local farmers shored up its base with concrete, so that the troll still stands.

   Did you know? A magnitude-7 earthquake shook the Skagafjörður area of north Iceland in 1963, and the stack is thought to have survived it only thanks to the concrete poured around its base.

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2. 02 Durdle Door

   United Kingdom · 29.2 km from Bournemouth50.621° N 2.277° W

   

   The geology here is unusually clear to read. The rock layers stand almost vertical, squeezed during the mountain-building that raised the Alps, and different bands lie side by side: limestone at the shore, a narrow belt of soft clays and sands, then the thick chalk of the Purbeck Hills. At Swanage, 16 km to the east, the limestone and chalk are more than 3 km apart; at Durdle Door they almost touch. The same hard band, broken into rocks, shows above the waves as Man O'War Rocks in the cove to the east, and to the west as a line of islets called the Bull, the Blind Cow, the Cow and the Calf.

   Did you know? The tilted rocks belong to the Lulworth Crumple, a set of folds created as the same continental collision raised the Alps.

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3. 03 Es Pontàs

   Spain39.326° N 3.145° E

   

   The best way to enjoy it is from the cliff-top viewpoint above, the Mirador d'Es Pontàs, where the arch is framed against the open sea. It is especially beautiful early and late in the day, when low sunlight turns the limestone gold and the water beneath shifts from turquoise to deep blue. From the land it can only be looked at; reaching the arch itself means coming by water, swimming or by boat.

   Did you know? The crux is a leap of about seven feet between holds, made some 35 feet above the water with nothing but the sea to catch a miss.

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4. 04 Pravčická brána

   Czech Republic · 28.4 km from Ústí nad Labem50.884° N 14.281° E

   

   The stone is Cretaceous sandstone, laid down on the floor of a sea that once covered this part of Central Europe. As the sea retreated, the Elbe and its tributaries cut deep valleys into the soft rock, leaving steep walls and isolated towers. Weathering then worked on one of those walls from both sides, hollowing overhangs until the rock finally broke through, leaving the span that stands today. It belongs to the Elbe Sandstone Mountains, a landscape of rock towers and gorges that straddles the Czech–German border, and it is the most striking single form in it.

   Did you know? The Czech name settled only in the 1930s, adapted from the German Prebischtor, and has nothing to do with the Moravian village of Pravčice.

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5. 05 Pont d'Arc

   France44.382° N 4.417° E

   

   It formed through the slow work of water on limestone. The Ardèche once looped around this rock spur in a wide meander; over tens of thousands of years it dissolved and wore its way through the neck of the spur, creating a shortcut and leaving the arch above. The abandoned riverbed can still be traced nearby in the Combe d'Arc. Arches like this are fleeting on a geological timescale, and few survive at such a size.

   Did you know? In 2017 climber Chris Sharma made the first ascent across the underside of the arch as a deep-water solo, with only the river to catch his falls.

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6. 06 Torghatten

   Norway65.398° N 12.090° E

   

   The mountain is made of foliated Proterozoic granite. For a long time the hole was explained simply as the work of waves when the sea stood higher after the last ice age, but more recent research points to several processes acting over at least two glacial cycles: meltwater draining beneath the ice, the movement of the ice itself, and wave erosion. At the height of the last glaciation, some 20,000 years ago, the area lay under roughly a kilometre of ice.

   Did you know? Geologists found no rounded cobbles or boulders inside the tunnel, the debris that would be expected if waves had done most of the carving.

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7. 07 Dyrhólaey

   Iceland63.404° N 19.117° W

   

   The view from the top is one of the finest on the south coast. To the east lie the long beach of Reynisfjara and the basalt sea stacks of Reynisdrangar standing in the surf; to the north, the ice cap of Mýrdalsjökull; to the west, the coast runs away towards Selfoss, depending on the weather. Below, the Atlantic breaks against the arch and the cliff faces. In summer the ledges are crowded with nesting seabirds, including many Atlantic puffins, which sit at the cliff edge within easy sight.

   Did you know? The 1993 flight through the arch was made by pilot Arngrímur Jóhannsson in a small Citabria aerobatic plane, which passed through the opening three times.

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8. 08 Arco Naturale

   Italy · 32.5 km from Naples40.549° N 14.256° E

   

   What makes the arch so arresting is its frame. Looking through the opening, the eye travels over rugged ridges and plunging cliffs to the blue water of the gulf and the distant coast of the mainland, with the little Li Galli islands floating offshore. Its curve is unusually round for a natural formation, and long, pale stalactites, formed by water seeping through the limestone, still cling to the underside of the vault.

   Did you know? It is the surviving section of the roof of a large cave that collapsed through landslides and erosion.

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9. 09 Vratna Gates

   Прерасти у кањону Вратне

   Serbia · 39.2 km from Drobeta-Turnu Severin44.383° N 22.337° E

   

   The first two arches stand directly over the stream. The Little Prerast is 34 metres high, with an opening 22 metres wide and a span of rock about 15 metres long and 10 metres thick. The Big Prerast is lower, at 26 metres, but far more massive: its arch runs 45 metres long and is around 30 metres thick, spanning an opening 23 metres wide. The third, the Dry Prerast, is 20 metres high and 34 metres long, with a 15-metre opening; it owes its name to the fact that in summer the river sinks into the ground before reaching it and reappears further on. All three are cut into late Jurassic limestone.

   Did you know? The Dry Prerast lies almost 3 km upstream of the other two arches, near a point where the river drops about 50 metres.

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10. 10 Marvelous Bridges

    Чудните мостове

    Bulgaria · 39.9 km from Plovdiv41.819° N 24.581° E

    

    The formation is the work of water. The Erkyupriya, once a much larger river than the stream seen today, worked its way along fissures in the marble and hollowed out a cave; eventually the roof of the cave collapsed, leaving only the sections that now stand as bridges. About 200 metres downstream is the smaller bridge, 60 metres long and some 50 metres high, with an arch rising to about 30 metres. Further on, a third small opening marks the point where the river sinks underground; cavers have followed its course for around three kilometres to a flooded passage.

    Did you know? According to local legend, shepherds fed a dragon a donkey loaded with burning tinder, and the maddened beast tore open the gorge as it fled underground.

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11. 11 Green Bridge of Wales

    United Kingdom51.610° N 4.998° W

    

    The arch is carved from Carboniferous Limestone, a thick formation laced with bands of chert that builds this whole stretch of coast. Storm waves armed with pebbles and sand, together with the slow chemical dissolving of the rock, attack the cliff wherever it is weakest, along folds and small faults. Here the sea worked on both flanks of a narrow headland, hollowing out caves from either side until they broke through to one another. The outer pier of the bridge rests on a pedestal of harder rock, which has so far held it up.

    Did you know? Close by stand the Elegug Stacks, two detached limestone pillars where razorbills and guillemots nest each spring.

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12. 12 Bow Fiddle Rock

    United Kingdom57.707° N 2.850° W

    

    The rock is quartzite — sandstone that was buried, heated and turned into a hard metamorphic stone — belonging to a thick band of quartzite that runs along the coast between Buckie and Cullen and dates from the Neoproterozoic, somewhere between about a billion and 539 million years ago. The layers were buckled when ancient continents collided in the Caledonian mountain-building episode, and the steep tilt of the beds is what gives the arch its lean. The sea has since worn away the softer ground around it and opened the hole through its foot.

    Did you know? Its steeply tilted layers were buckled when the ancient continents of Laurentia and Avalonia collided during the Caledonian mountain-building episode.

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