The Most Remarkable Canal Locks in the World
8 places in 5 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most remarkable canal locks in the world are Fonseranes Locks, Béziers (France), Neptune's Staircase (United Kingdom) and Foxton Locks (United Kingdom). The list covers 8 canal locks in 5 countries. The United Kingdom has the most, with 4. Last updated 13 October 2026.
A canal lock is a simple machine: a chamber, two pairs of gates and the patience to fill or empty it. Set them one after another up a hillside and the result becomes a landscape of its own, a ladder of water climbing a slope, with balance beams, paddle gear and lock cottages repeated at every step. The most remarkable flights show how hard the builders fought for every metre of height.
In Scotland, Thomas Telford's Neptune's Staircase lifts the Caledonian Canal through eight connected chambers within sight of Ben Nevis. England's Caen Hill Locks on the Kennet and Avon Canal rise in a long straight flight, Foxton Locks climb in two staircases of five, and the Bingley Five Rise opened in 1774 as the steepest staircase lock in Britain. On the Canal du Midi, the Fonseranes Locks descend towards Béziers in a seventeenth-century staircase. The scale changes entirely at the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal, and on the Rideau Canal a flight of locks rises beside Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
The locks were chosen for how they look and are ordered by beauty. Each has its own text, a photograph credited to its author and a point on the map; the section also opens country by country on separate pages.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fonseranes Locks, Béziers | Lock | France | |
| 2 | Neptune's Staircase | Lock | United Kingdom | |
| 3 | Foxton Locks | Lock | United Kingdom | |
| 4 | Caen Hill Locks | Lock | United Kingdom | |
| 5 | Miraflores Locks, Panama Canal | Lock | Panama | |
| 6 | Vrangfoss Locks | Lock | Norway | |
| 7 | Bingley Five Rise Locks | Boat lift | United Kingdom | |
| 8 | Ottawa Locks | Lock | Canada |
01 Fonseranes Locks, Béziers
Écluses de Fonseranes
France · 2.4 km from Béziers43.331° N 3.199° E
Ad Meskens · CC BY-SA 3.0 Just west of Béziers, the Canal du Midi arrives at the edge of a ridge and has to drop down towards the river Orb. Pierre-Paul Riquet's answer, built between 1678 and 1680, was a staircase of lock basins set one directly after another, so that the upper gate of each is the lower gate of the next: nine gates and eight basins which together carry boats through a height of 21.5 metres over a distance of a little more than 300 metres. Riquet died in October 1680, months before his canal was inaugurated in May 1681; the Fonseranes staircase, known locally as the nine locks, is among the most memorable pieces of his work.
Did you know? The staircase draws around 320,000 visitors a year, ranking third in the former Languedoc-Roussillon region after the Pont du Gard and the walled city of Carcassonne.
02 Neptune's Staircase
United Kingdom · 3.5 km from Fort William56.846° N 5.094° W
aeroid · CC BY-SA 3.0 At Banavie, on the northern edge of Fort William, the Caledonian Canal begins its climb out of the sea lochs into the Great Glen with a flight of eight locks built one against the next, so that each gate serves two chambers at once. Neptune's Staircase raises boats about 20 metres, and it is the longest staircase lock in Britain. Each chamber is 180 feet long and 40 feet wide, and working a boat through the whole flight still takes around an hour and a half.
Did you know? Before mechanisation the gates were worked by 36 capstans, and taking a boat through the whole flight meant 126 turns and over half a day.
03 Foxton Locks
United Kingdom · 17.6 km from Leicester52.501° N 0.983° W
Colin Park · CC BY-SA 2.0 Foxton is where the Leicester line of the Grand Union Canal steps down off a ridge in the Leicestershire countryside, and it does so in the most concentrated way possible: ten locks arranged as two staircases of five, where the top gate of one chamber is the bottom gate of the next, joined by a short pound in the middle. Together they lower boats about 23 metres, and it is the longest flight of staircase locks on the English canals. Working through takes the better part of an hour, usually with a volunteer or lock-keeper on hand during the cruising season from Easter to October.
Did you know? Foxton's lost boat lift carried two narrowboats each way in about 12 minutes, against roughly an hour and a quarter through the locks.
04 Caen Hill Locks
United Kingdom · 22.9 km from Bath51.353° N 2.026° W
Image by caenhillcc from Pixabay Caen Hill Locks form the steepest and most demanding stretch of the Kennet and Avon Canal, climbing the escarpment west of Devizes in Wiltshire. The canal as a whole was engineered by John Rennie and largely built between 1794 and 1801, but the Caen Hill flight, needed to overcome a rise of 237 feet in under two miles, proved so difficult that it was not finished until 1810, making it the last major section of the canal to open.
Did you know? The straight run of sixteen locks up the hillside is ranked among the Seven Wonders of the Waterways and is protected as a scheduled monument.
05 Miraflores Locks, Panama Canal
Miraflores
Panama · 5.9 km from Balboa8.997° N 79.592° W
Ibn Fawda al-Ameriki · CC BY-SA 3.0 Miraflores is the last step of the Panama Canal before the Pacific, or the first coming the other way: a pair of lock chambers in two stages that lift ships between sea level and Miraflores Lake. The average lift is about 16.5 metres, but here the number refuses to stay put — the Pacific has a large tidal range at this end of the isthmus, so the total climb swings from roughly 13 metres at extreme high tide to nearly 20 at extreme low. To cope with it, Miraflores was given the tallest gates of the original canal, some leaves standing about 25 metres high.
Did you know? Filling a single chamber takes about 101,000 cubic metres of water, all of it released from the lake above and later sent down to the sea.
06 Vrangfoss Locks
Norway · 25.3 km from Skien59.302° N 9.204° E
christophe Dayer from onex, Suisse · CC BY-SA 2.0 Vrangfoss is the grand staircase of the Telemark Canal. Five chambers cut side by side into the rock climb 23 metres beside the place where the Eidselva once tumbled through a narrow gorge, and they make up the largest lock flight on a waterway that runs 105 km from Skien into the mountains at Dalen. Before the canal, this two-kilometre stretch of rapids and deep chasms, with a fall of about 25 metres, was the worst obstacle on the route: timber floated down from the interior piled up here, and boats could not pass at all.
Did you know? Before the canal, up to 14 men were employed all year round at Vrangfoss just to free the timber that jammed in the gorge.
07 Bingley Five Rise Locks
United Kingdom · 9 km from Bradford53.856° N 1.838° W
Sirenuk · CC BY-SA 3.0 Bingley Five Rise Locks carry the Leeds and Liverpool Canal up one of the steepest sections of its route, in the town of Bingley in West Yorkshire. They were designed and built under the canal's chief engineer, John Longbotham, and opened on 21 March 1774 after about three years of construction, an event marked at the time by large crowds gathering to watch the first boats pass through.
Did you know? About 30,000 people are said to have turned out for the opening in 1774, and the first boat took just 28 minutes to climb the whole staircase.
08 Ottawa Locks
Canada · 0.9 km from Ottawa45.425° N 75.696° W
Image by pcowan5188 from Pixabay The Rideau Canal begins with its most dramatic flourish: eight locks climbing one after another out of the Ottawa River, a stone staircase set into a ravine between Parliament Hill and the Château Laurier. Boats rise 24.1 metres in the course of the flight — the biggest single lift anywhere on the Rideau system — and the passage takes about an hour and a half. From the river the view is of grey limestone chambers, dark timber gates and green copper roofs above; from the bridge at the top, of the whole flight dropping away towards the water.
Did you know? The Rideau Canal, which begins at this flight, is the oldest continuously operated canal system in North America.
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 is a staircase lock?
- A staircase lock is a flight in which the chambers are joined directly, so the upper gates of one lock are the lower gates of the next. Neptune's Staircase in Scotland and the Bingley Five Rise in England are well-known examples.
- Which country has the most remarkable canal locks?
- In our collection, the most come from the United Kingdom (4), Canada (1) and France (1).
- How many locks are there at Caen Hill?
- The Caen Hill flight on the Kennet and Avon Canal near Devizes has 29 locks in all, 16 of them in a straight line up the hill.
- What is the most remarkable canal lock in the world?
- On our list, Fonseranes Locks, Béziers (France) ranks first, followed by Neptune's Staircase (United Kingdom) and Foxton Locks (United Kingdom).
- How many canal locks are on this list in the world?
- The list covers 8 canal locks in 5 countries. The United Kingdom has the most, with 4.