The Most Beautiful Nature Sanctuaries in Europe

25 places in 12 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Bardenas Reales

   Spain42.190° N 1.500° W

   

   The most spectacular part is the Bardena Blanca in the centre, named for the pale, salt-crusted gypsum soils. Here the erosion is most intense, and hard caps of sandstone protect softer clay beneath, leaving isolated pillars. The best known is Castildetierra, a slender chimney of clay under a sandstone lid that has become the emblem of the region and the textbook example of how the badlands form. To the north lies the cultivated plateau of El Plano; to the south, on the border with Aragon, the higher Bardena Negra, darker and more wooded.

   Did you know? Castildetierra, the clay chimney that symbolises the park, is so fragile that under ordinary weather its remaining life has been estimated at only about four decades.

   More about Bardenas Reales →

2. 02 Plitvice Lakes National Park

   Nacionalni park Plitvička jezera

   Croatia44.880° N 15.616° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage
   • UNESCO natural beauty

   

   That means the landscape people photograph is never finished; it's mid-construction, permanently. The famous shifts in the water's colour — turquoise, green, grey, depending on mineral content, sunlight angle and the season — come from exactly the same chemistry that's building the barriers, which is part of why the colour looks different every time someone visits rather than being some kind of seasonal trick.

   Did you know? Its Veliki slap, the Great Waterfall, plunges 78 metres.

   More about Plitvice Lakes National Park →

3. 03 Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park

   Parque natural del Cabo de Gata-Níjar

   Spain · 36.5 km from Almería36.900° N 2.030° W

   • UNESCO Global Geopark
   • biosphere reserve

   

   The Sierra del Cabo de Gata is volcanic, and the park is essentially an old volcanic field worn down by sea and wind: lava flows, domes and the hollows of calderas, with cliffs up to about 100 metres dropping into the water. That geology earned it a place in UNESCO's Global Geoparks Network in 2006; it has also been a Biosphere Reserve since 1997. Between the village of San Miguel and the cape itself, the salt pans of Las Salinas lie behind a sand bar, a Ramsar wetland, and near the Cabo de Gata lighthouse rise the rocks of the Arrecife de las Sirenas, one of the best-loved images of the province.

   More about Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park →

4. 04 El Torcal de Antequera

   Torcal de Antequera

   Spain · 29.2 km from Málaga36.964° N 4.546° W

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The stone is Jurassic limestone laid down about 150 million years ago on the floor of a sea channel that once linked the Atlantic and the Mediterranean between Cádiz and Alicante. Uplifted to over 1,300 metres, the beds stayed almost horizontal, which is unusual in Andalusia. Rainwater then worked along two sets of fractures crossing at right angles, opening narrow corridors between the blocks, while dissolution and frost split the horizontal layers into the stacked, rounded shapes seen today. Many formations carry names from their shapes, such as the Sphinx, the Jug, the Camel and the Screw (El Tornillo), the best known. Caves riddle the rock; the Cueva del Toro has yielded Neolithic finds.

   Did you know? In 1929 it became the first protected natural area in Andalusia, recognised as a site of national interest.

   More about El Torcal de Antequera →

5. 05 Adršpach-Teplice Rocks

   Czech Republic50.611° N 16.115° E

   

   In the Adršpach rocks the paths run through narrow clefts between pillars, past a waterfall and two small lakes. The formations have names that go back centuries: the Mayor and his Wife, the Lovers, the Sugar Loaf, Rübezahl's Organ. The Teplice rocks are more austere, with sheer walls along the Skalní potok stream, the ridge of the Čáp at 786 metres, and a rocky maze of plateaus and passages. Three medieval rock castles, Střmen, Adršpach and Skály, stand in the area in ruins.

   Did you know? For centuries local people entered the maze of towers only when they needed a hiding place from danger.

   More about Adršpach-Teplice Rocks →

6. 06 St Kilda

   United Kingdom57.815° N 8.588° W

   • UNESCO World Heritage
   • UNESCO natural beauty

   

   People lived here for at least two thousand years, and probably far longer: pottery found in 2015 points to Neolithic settlers. The islanders lived on seabirds, taken by men who climbed the cliffs and stacks, on a few sheep and cattle, and on barley and potatoes grown in Village Bay. Adult men met each morning in the street to decide the day's work, a gathering outsiders called the St Kilda parliament. Everything was stored in cleits, dry-stone huts with turf roofs that let the wind through but kept out the rain; some 1,260 of them still stud Hirta, with about 170 more on the other islands. The curved street of cottages dates from a rebuilding in the 1830s.

   Did you know? Islanders sent mail by casting messages adrift in floats, a method begun in 1877 when nine shipwrecked Austrian sailors were stranded on Hirta.

   More about St Kilda →

7. 07 Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park

   Parque Nacional de Ordesa y Monte Perdido

   Spain42.672° N 0.056° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage
   • UNESCO natural beauty

   

   Four valleys radiate from the massif, each with its own character. The Ordesa valley is the classic one — a U-shaped trough carved by glaciers, its sides layered like a cut cake, with a trail climbing past a string of waterfalls to the Circo de Soaso and the horsetail fall of the Cola de Caballo. Añisclo, Escuaín and Pineta are the others, each a deep cut into the massif, and together they show how differently ice and running water have worked the same rock. Above, chamois graze the ledges, marmots whistle in the meadows, and bearded vultures and golden eagles ride the updrafts.

   Did you know? The last Pyrenean ibex, a female named Celia, was found dead on 6 January 2000, crushed by a falling tree.

   More about Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park →

8. 08 Teide National Park

   Parque Nacional del Teide

   Spain28.276° N 16.643° W

   • UNESCO World Heritage
   • UNESCO natural beauty

   

   Most visitors come for the landscape, which looks unlike anything else in Europe. Lava flows of different ages lie across the caldera floor in black, brown and rust; the plain of Ucanca stretches flat and pale beneath the peak; the eroded rock towers of the Roques de García stand like sculptures beside the road; the pumice fields of Minas de San José look lunar. The resemblance is not only poetic — the park's terrain is so close to that of Mars that ESA and NASA have tested instruments and rovers here. On a ridge east of the peak sit the telescopes of the Teide Observatory, where the sun shines nearly 3,500 hours a year.

   More about Teide National Park →

9. 09 The Needles

   United Kingdom · 29.6 km from Southampton50.663° N 1.589° W

   

   Their shape owes much to the earth movements of the Alpine mountain-building period, which folded the chalk beds here until they stood almost on end. That near-vertical layering is why the stacks break away as thin, upright slabs rather than rounded lumps. There used to be a fourth: a slender pillar, said to have been around 120 feet tall and known as Lot's Wife, which fell during a storm in 1764. It was that lost spire, not the blunter survivors, that gave the group its name, from the Old English word for a needle.

   Did you know? Rocket engines tested on the cliffs of High Down powered Black Arrow, which in 1971 launched the Prospero satellite into orbit.

   More about The Needles →

10. 10 Landmannalaugar

    Iceland63.989° N 19.064° W

    

    The colours come from rhyolite, a silica-rich volcanic rock that is rare in basalt-dominated Iceland. Landmannalaugar sits within the Torfajökull volcanic system, the largest area of rhyolite in the country, and heat and water rising from below have altered the rock into clays and oxides of every hue: iron gives the reds and yellows, other minerals the greens and blues. The Laugahraun lava flow at the edge of the campsite erupted around 1477; walking into it, you clamber between jagged blocks studded with shiny black obsidian.

    Did you know? The valley floor lies at about 600 metres above sea level, at the very edge of the Laugahraun lava field.

    More about Landmannalaugar →

11. 11 Mount Pico

    Montanha do Pico

    Portugal · 22.6 km from Horta38.469° N 28.399° W

    

    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. The volcano is dormant rather than extinct: in historical times flank eruptions sent lava flows down to the sea in 1562–1564, 1718 and from July to December 1720, and gas still escapes near the summit. Since 1972 the upper mountain has been protected as a nature reserve covering about 13.4 km², and an atmospheric observatory has operated at 2,225 metres since 1998.

    Did you know? The nearest higher summit is Roque de los Muchachos on La Palma in the Canary Islands, about 1,450 km away.

    More about Mount Pico →

12. 12 Scandola Nature Reserve

    France42.357° N 8.567° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage
    • UNESCO natural beauty

    

    The reserve was created in 1975 and was among the first in France to protect both land and sea together. It covers a little under 20 square kilometres, roughly half of it marine, with a strictly protected core at its north-western tip. Its value for scientists lies partly underwater: calcareous algae build pale ledges along the waterline, and deeper down coral formations and seagrass meadows shelter a wealth of fish and invertebrates. On land, the cliffs hold dozens of endemic plants and give nesting room to ospreys, shags, peregrine falcons and gulls. Scandola was once a last refuge in Corsica for the Mediterranean monk seal, which has since vanished from these waters.

    Did you know? The reserve was created by decree on 9 December 1975, becoming the first in France to protect a stretch of land and sea together.

    More about Scandola Nature Reserve →

13. 13 Pico Island Vineyards

    Portugal · 9.3 km from Horta38.513° N 28.541° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Viticulture arrived with Portuguese settlers, including Franciscan and Carmelite friars, in the late 15th century. By the 19th century Pico's wine, above all its Verdelho, was exported widely; island tradition proudly recalls that it reached tables as far away as the Americas and the court of the Russian tsars. Then powdery mildew and phylloxera struck in the mid-1800s, and the trade collapsed for generations. Many enclosures were abandoned to scrub, but around Criação Velha the old vineyards were kept up and today again produce wine.

    Did you know? By the end of the 20th century barely more than 100 hectares were still being farmed; replanting has since brought the island back to roughly 1,000 hectares.

    More about Pico Island Vineyards →

14. 14 Słowiński National Park

    Słowiński Park Narodowy

    Poland54.703° N 17.307° E

    

    The moving dunes near Łeba are the largest such field in Europe and the reason most people come. The highest, Łącka Góra, rises around 40 metres above the sea, and from its crest the view takes in a landscape that seems to belong to another continent: a pale, rippled desert of sand, with the grey-blue Baltic on one side and the reedy expanse of Łebsko on the other. In spring 2016 the wind uncovered the stumps of a forest buried several thousand years ago - a reminder that the dunes have been travelling here for a very long time. Walk on to the north and the sand runs straight down to the open Baltic beach.

    Did you know? From the late 1960s into the 1970s, Polish scientists launched Meteor meteorological rockets from the same former German test site near Łeba.

    More about Słowiński National Park →

15. 15 Piani di Castelluccio

    Italy42.812° N 13.209° E

    

    The basin is the floor of an ancient Apennine lake. Glacial and alluvial deposits filled it and karst processes now drain it: the water gathered by the Fosso dei Mergani disappears into sinkholes and flows away underground, so there is no lake today, only a flat, grassy floor. The climate is harsh for Italy, and winter temperatures on the plain can fall below −30 °C.

    Did you know? On 2 March 2005 a mass of Siberian air drove the temperature on the Pian Grande down to about −32 °C, one of the lowest readings ever recorded in Italy.

    More about Piani di Castelluccio →

16. 16 Pobiti Kamani

    Bulgaria · 15.4 km from Varna43.226° N 27.707° E

    

    Their origin puzzled scientists for a long time. The Russian archaeologist Victor Teplyakov described them in 1829, and early theories ranged from petrified trees to coral growth to purely mechanical erosion. Current research reads them as the remains of an ancient seabed seep system: in the Lower Eocene, around 50 million years ago, methane-rich fluids rose through the sediments of a shallow sea, and microbes that fed on the gas cemented the sand around each rising plume into a tube. When the soft sand was later washed and blown away, the hardened tubes were left standing.

    Did you know? Until 1942 the site was known by its Turkish name, Dikilitash, which also means 'planted stones'.

    More about Pobiti Kamani →

17. 17 Cíes Islands

    Illas Cíes

    Spain · 14.1 km from Vigo42.233° N 8.900° W

    

    The western cliffs are the islands' other character. They drop more than 100 metres into the sea, cut into caves and ledges, and they belong to the birds: the archipelago holds around 22,000 pairs of gulls and is one of the major seabird colonies of Europe. Walking paths climb from the beaches to the summits - the highest point, Alto das Cíes on Monteagudo, reaches 197 metres - and to the lighthouse on O Faro, first lit in the nineteenth century, from where the whole archipelago, the beaches and the open Atlantic are laid out at once. Under the water lie forests of brown algae, and dolphins are regularly seen in the surrounding sea.

    Did you know? Atlantic storms tend to pass over the islands and unload on the mainland, so the Cíes get only about half the rain of the surrounding Rías Baixas.

    More about Cíes Islands →

18. 18 Dobšinská Ice Cave

    Dobšinská ľadová jaskyňa

    Slovakia48.868° N 20.304° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The cave was carved by the Hnilec in Middle Triassic limestone and was once connected to the neighbouring Stratenská cave. A roof collapse cut it off and left a sack-shaped cavity about 180 metres wide descending some 70 metres from a single opening. Heavy cold air flows in and settles there in winter, and water seeping in during spring freezes into floor ice, icefalls and columns. The floor ice reaches about 25 metres in thickness and is clearly layered, and estimates of the total volume run well above 100,000 cubic metres. The Great Hall, an ellipse about 72 by 42 metres, averages around −1 °C, and the biggest ice column is about 9 metres high.

    Did you know? Eugen Ruffinyi made the first descent on 15 June 1870 together with Gustáv Lang and Andrej Mega.

    More about Dobšinská Ice Cave →

19. 19 Ochtinská Aragonite Cave

    Ochtinská aragonitová jaskyňa

    Slovakia48.665° N 20.309° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    No natural entrance ever existed. The cave was found by chance in 1954, when Martin Cangár and Jiří Prošek, workers of a mineral prospecting company, broke into it while driving an exploratory gallery. It lies in a lens of ancient Devonian limestone and ankerite surrounded by non-karst phyllite rock, and its narrow, upward-tapering passages and chambers were dissolved by slowly moving water mixing along tectonic fractures. A man-made tunnel about 145 metres long, dug from 1966, now leads visitors in to the cave level at 642 metres above sea level.

    Did you know? Iron-rich ochre sediments in the cave hold roughly half their weight in water, absorbing and releasing moisture that helps keep the microclimate stable.

    More about Ochtinská Aragonite Cave →

20. 20 Calanques National Park

    Parc national des Calanques

    France · 11.1 km from Marseille43.209° N 5.449° E

    

    The national park was created by decree in April 2012, and it is unusual in reaching right up to the edge of a large city. It covers about 520 square kilometres, of which only around 85 are on land; the rest is sea, including the islands of the Riou archipelago. Despite the dry, wind-scoured hills, the massif holds roughly 900 plant species, many of them adapted to drought and salt spray, and the cliffs shelter Bonelli's eagle and nesting shearwaters, while red coral, groupers and meadows of seagrass live below the surface.

    Did you know? Calanques was the first national park in Europe to protect land and sea together on the very edge of a major city.

    More about Calanques National Park →

21. 21 Caldera de Taburiente National Park

    Parque nacional de la Caldera de Taburiente

    Spain28.754° N 17.885° W

    

    Despite its name, the caldera was not created by a single volcanic explosion. Over several million years, a series of overlapping shield volcanoes built up a mountain in the north of La Palma some 3,000 metres high. Around half a million years ago its south-western flank gave way and slid towards the ocean in a gigantic landslide, and running water has been widening and deepening the resulting hollow ever since. The basin drains to the sea through a single deep gorge, the Barranco de las Angustias, and streams fed by springs flow year-round inside it, a rarity in the Canary Islands.

    Did you know? Its highest point, the Roque de los Muchachos on the northern rim, rises to 2,426 metres.

    More about Caldera de Taburiente National Park →

22. 22 Timanfaya National Park

    Parque Nacional de Timanfaya

    Spain · 24.1 km from Arrecife29.014° N 13.780° W

    

    Much of what is known about the first months comes from the parish priest of Yaiza, Andrés Lorenzo Curbelo, whose account describes a mountain rising out of the earth in a single night and rivers of fire running down to the sea, while the inhabitants fled and returned and fled again. Today the area is still called the Montañas del Fuego, the Fire Mountains, and the name is not just poetry. Just beneath the surface the ground is still remarkably hot, and some 13 metres down temperatures reach several hundred degrees; at the Islote de Hilario, water poured into a shaft bursts back out as a column of steam within seconds.

    Did you know? A later, much shorter eruption on Lanzarote took place in 1824.

    More about Timanfaya National Park →

23. 23 Picos de Europa National Park

    Parque nacional de Picos de Europa

    Spain43.250° N 4.917° W

    • biosphere reserve

    

    The mountains are built of thick Palaeozoic limestone, carved by glaciers during the Ice Ages and riddled since by the dissolving action of water into sinkholes, deep shafts and enormous cave systems. Three massifs are separated by gorges of startling depth, the most famous being the gorge of the river Cares, whose path cut into the cliff between Poncebos and Caín threads along the wall high above the water.

    Did you know? The Torre de Cerredo, at about 2,648 m, is the highest summit in the Picos de Europa.

    More about Picos de Europa National Park →

24. 24 Đavolja Varoš

    Serbia42.988° N 21.394° E

    

    The formations are the product of soil erosion in a landscape shaped by intense volcanic activity millions of years ago. The andesite caps shelter the softer earth below, so the material around each cap washes away while the column under it survives. In its present form, though, the "town" is fairly young. As people cleared the surrounding forests, rain was able to attack the slopes. The pillars are still changing: old ones crumble and new ones appear. Tomislav Rakićević examined and described the site scientifically in 1955. Two springs rise below the pillars. 5, and carries around 15 grams of minerals per litre. The other is Crveno vrelo, the "Red Well".

    Did you know? Folklore warns that anyone who carries a stone away from the site will be turned to stone as well.

    More about Đavolja Varoš →

25. 25 Askja

    Iceland65.030° N 16.750° W

    

    What draws the eye is a set of calderas nested one inside another. The oldest and widest is a basin of about 50 square kilometres left by a prehistoric eruption; within it lies the main caldera, roughly eight kilometres wide. Then, in March 1875, a violent eruption lasting about seventeen hours threw out close to two cubic kilometres of tephra, and over the following months the ground sank to form a new hollow about five kilometres across. Water filled it, and the result is Öskjuvatn, a deep-blue lake roughly 220 metres deep, the second deepest in Iceland, lying some 50 metres below the floor of the surrounding caldera and frozen for much of the year.

    Did you know? The 1875 eruption ranks among the two or three most powerful explosive eruptions in Iceland since settlement, after Hekla in 1104 and Öræfajökull in the 14th century.

    More about Askja →