The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders in Portugal
8 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful natural wonders in Portugal are Algar do Carvão, Mount Pico and Capelinhos. The list covers 8 natural wonders. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Portugal's natural wonders come from two different worlds. On the mainland, the Atlantic has spent millions of years working on the soft golden limestone of the Algarve, cutting it into arches, stacks and sea caves. Far out in the ocean, the Azores and Madeira are volcanic islands, built by eruptions and still shaped by them: the Azores sit where three tectonic plates meet, and their craters, lava tubes and basalt cliffs are some of the youngest land in the Atlantic.
Mount Pico, on the island of the same name, is the highest mountain in Portugal, a steep volcanic cone rising straight from the sea. On Terceira, Algar do Carvão is a rare volcanic vent that can be entered from above, a vertical chimney descending to a lake and walls coated with silica formations. On Faial, Capelinhos shows how new land is made: an eruption off the coast in the late 1950s built a headland of ash and buried the lighthouse beside it. Rocha dos Bordões on Flores displays tall columns of basalt formed as lava cooled and cracked.
Madeira adds altitude and drama. Pico do Areeiro gives views over a sea of jagged ridges and clouds, and Cabo Girão drops almost vertically to small terraced fields at the edge of the ocean. Back on the mainland, Ponta da Piedade near Lagos is a cluster of ochre pillars and grottoes above green water, and the Algar de Benagil is a sea cave whose domed roof opens to the sky above a small beach.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Algar do Carvão | Cave | |
| 2 | Mount Pico | Volcano | |
| 3 | Capelinhos | Volcano | |
| 4 | Pico do Areeiro | Summit | |
| 5 | Ponta da Piedade | Cliff | |
| 6 | Cabo Girão | Cliff | |
| 7 | Rocha dos Bordões | Rock formation | |
| 8 | Algar de Benagil | Cave |
01 Algar do Carvão
Portugal · 8.7 km from Angra do Heroísmo38.729° N 27.214° W
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0 The descent begins through a tunnel cut in the 1960s and continues on a long stairway — more than three hundred steps — that winds down past walls of basalt, black obsidian and reddish iron oxides. Looking back up, the mouth of the chimney is framed by ferns and mosses hanging into the light, an image that has become one of the best known of the Azores.
Did you know? Of the two inner vaults, the one above the lake is dominated by white silica, the other by reddish iron deposits.
02 Mount Pico
Montanha do Pico
Portugal · 22.6 km from Horta38.469° N 28.399° W
José Luís Ávila Silveira/Pedro Noronha e Costa · Public domain Pico is a young stratovolcano, built up within the last 230,000 years, and part of its slopes are younger still. At the top lies Pico Alto, a crater about 500 metres across and 30 metres deep, from which a small secondary cone, Piquinho or Pico Pequeno, climbs another 70 metres to form the true summit.
Did you know? All of Pico's historical eruptions broke out from vents on its flanks rather than from the summit crater.
03 Capelinhos
Vulcão dos Capelinhos
Portugal · 17.9 km from Horta38.601° N 28.832° W
Image by Comanche0 from Pixabay The activity began offshore. After some two hundred earthquakes in mid-September 1957, the sea about a kilometre beyond the lighthouse began to boil, and on 27 September an eruption broke the surface a few hundred metres off the point. Within weeks a small island had risen from the water; locals gave it several names, among them Ilha Nova, "the New Island".
Did you know? Two small islets off the point vanished beneath sand and ash and became part of the new land joined to Faial.
04 Pico do Areeiro
Pico do Arieiro
Portugal · 10.5 km from Funchal32.736° N 16.929° W
Krzysztof Popławski · CC BY 4.0 Unusually for a mountain of such drama, the summit can be reached by road, with a large car park and a restaurant at the top, and on busy days up to a thousand people come up. The summit also carries an air-defence radar station of the Portuguese Air Force, built in 2011.
Did you know? A visitor centre near the summit is dedicated to Zino's petrel, known locally as the freira.
05 Ponta da Piedade
Portugal · 13.4 km from Portimão37.079° N 8.668° W
Image by Metropolitaneando from Pixabay The colours are what most people remember: ochre, honey and rust in the cliffs, cut by bands of paler stone, against water that ranges from emerald in the shallows to deep blue offshore. The cliffs reach about 20 metres along much of the shore and about 40 metres at the cape itself.
Did you know? The old festival on the cape included fireworks launched near the cliff edge, and after people fell from the cliffs the authorities moved the celebration into town.
06 Cabo Girão
Portugal · 11.7 km from Funchal32.656° N 17.004° W
Image by Olga_Fil from Pixabay The view from the top is vertiginous in the literal sense. Since October 2012 a glass-floored skywalk has projected over the edge, so that visitors stand directly above the drop and look down past their feet to the surf. Along the coast the eye runs east towards Câmara de Lobos and Funchal and west along the high green south shore.
Did you know? The first viewpoint was built in 1938, together with an 850-metre access road cut specially to reach the headland.
07 Rocha dos Bordões
Portugal39.406° N 31.242° W
Unukorno · CC BY-SA 3.0 The columns are the product of a thick flow of basalt that cooled quickly. As lava shrinks while it solidifies, it cracks into a regular network of joints, and in a thick, uniform layer those cracks propagate through the whole mass, dividing it into long polygonal prisms – the process geologists call columnar jointing.
Did you know? Flores was first sighted in 1452 by the navigator Diogo de Teive and his son João, and early maps called it São Tomás and Santa Iria.
08 Algar de Benagil
Portugal · 11 km from Portimão37.087° N 8.424° W
Image by makabera from Pixabay The word algar describes a natural cavity that develops mainly vertically, and such features are especially common along the western Algarve coast, with their greatest concentration around Caramujeira in the municipality of Lagoa, just next to Benagil. They form in limestone, where rainwater, made slightly acidic by dissolved carbon dioxide, gradually eats into the rock.
Did you know? Nearby Praia da Marinha, on the same stretch of cliffs, has been ranked by the Michelin Guide among the ten most beautiful beaches in Europe.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful natural wonders in Portugal?
- On our list, Algar do Carvão ranks first, followed by Mount Pico and Capelinhos.
- What is the highest mountain in Portugal?
- Mount Pico, on Pico Island in the Azores, is the highest mountain in Portugal at about 2,351 metres. It is a stratovolcano whose last eruptions took place in the 18th century.
- Why are the Azores volcanic?
- The Azores lie near the junction of the North American, Eurasian and African plates, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Magma rising along these boundaries built the islands and still causes earthquakes and occasional eruptions.
- What happened at Capelinhos?
- In 1957 and 1958 a submarine eruption off the western tip of Faial built a new cone that joined the island, adding land to it. Ash buried nearby houses and the lower part of the lighthouse, which still stands as a landmark.
- How many natural wonders are on this list in Portugal?
- The list covers 8 natural wonders.