The Most Remarkable Canal Locks in Europe
6 places in 3 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most remarkable canal locks in Europe are Fonseranes Locks, Béziers (France), Neptune's Staircase (United Kingdom) and Foxton Locks (United Kingdom). The list covers 6 canal locks in 3 countries. The United Kingdom has the most, with 4. Last updated 13 October 2026.
A canal lock is a simple idea, a chamber with gates that raises or lowers a boat, but where a canal has to climb a steep slope, locks become monuments. Europe built its great canals between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, before railways, and its engineers solved hills by stacking locks into staircases, where the upper gate of one chamber is the lower gate of the next, or into long flights marching up a hillside. Many still work with the original gates and lock-keepers' cottages.
The Fonseranes Locks at Béziers, on Pierre-Paul Riquet's Canal du Midi, form a staircase of eight locks leading the canal down towards the river Orb. In Scotland, Neptune's Staircase near Fort William, designed by Thomas Telford for the Caledonian Canal, is the longest staircase lock in Britain, with views towards Ben Nevis. In Norway, the Vrangfoss Locks lift boats on the Telemark Canal through a series of chambers cut beside a waterfall in a forested valley.
England has the greatest concentration. Caen Hill Locks on the Kennet and Avon Canal climb a hillside near Devizes in a long, straight flight, with side ponds between them to store water. Foxton Locks in Leicestershire are two staircases of five locks each, with the remains of a Victorian boat lift beside them. And the Bingley Five Rise Locks on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, opened in the eighteenth century, are the steepest staircase lock in Britain.
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 | Vrangfoss Locks | Lock | Norway | |
| 6 | Bingley Five Rise Locks | Boat lift | United Kingdom |
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 What makes the flight beautiful is its shape. The basins are oval, their walls bowed outwards like the hull of a boat, a form Riquet used for locks along the canal. Seen from the top, the chain of pale stone chambers steps down the slope in a single line, with the water level falling from basin to basin and the plane trees of the towpath on either side. From the upper basin the view runs down over the valley to Béziers, whose Gothic cathedral of Saint-Nazaire stands high above the Orb on the far side.
Did you know? The locks were built for Riquet by subcontractors, the brothers Michel and Pierre Medailhes.
02 Neptune's Staircase
United Kingdom · 3.5 km from Fort William56.846° N 5.094° W
aeroid · CC BY-SA 3.0 The canal was one of the great public works of Thomas Telford, built between 1803 and 1822 to give ships a route across Scotland through the chain of lochs of the Great Glen instead of the dangerous passage around the north coast. Stone for the works came from a quarry opened at Corpach Moss nearby; the lock gates were originally worked by hand. After the canal passed to the British Waterways Board in 1962 a programme of mechanisation began, and by 1969 every lock on it had been converted to hydraulic power.
Did you know? Each of today's lock gates weighs about 22 tonnes, and a team of at least three lock-keepers is needed to run the staircase.
03 Foxton Locks
United Kingdom · 17.6 km from Leicester52.501° N 0.983° W
Colin Park · CC BY-SA 2.0 The flight was designed by Benjamin Bevan, begun in 1810 and opened on 1 October 1813. Because each chamber fills straight from the one above, the locks are flanked by side ponds, reached through paddles, that hold water back and stop the flight from draining the summit. Watching a narrowboat work down — the paddles wound, the water spilling sideways into the ponds, the painted boat sinking out of sight between the brick walls — is the pleasure of the place, and on a busy summer day there is a line of boats waiting at top and bottom.
Did you know? Working flat out for twelve hours, the inclined plane could move some 6,000 tons of cargo between the two levels.
04 Caen Hill Locks
United Kingdom · 22.9 km from Bath51.353° N 2.026° W
Image by caenhillcc from Pixabay The flight uses 29 locks in total between the bottom lock at Foxhangers and the top of the hill near Devizes town bridge. Sixteen of these are arranged as a continuous staircase, where the lower gate of one chamber doubles as the upper gate of the next; because there was no room on the slope for the normal side pounds that store water between locks, Rennie's design instead uses large, distinctively shaped side ponds beside the staircase to hold the water needed to refill each chamber. A brickworks was set up on site purely to supply the enormous quantity of bricks needed to line the lock chambers.
Did you know? A pump installed at the foot of the flight in 1996 can send about seven million gallons a day back to the top, roughly one lockful every eleven minutes.
05 Vrangfoss Locks
Norway · 25.3 km from Skien59.302° N 9.204° E
christophe Dayer from onex, Suisse · CC BY-SA 2.0 The flight was built between 1887 and 1892 as part of the Bandak–Norsjø Canal, the second and more ambitious phase of the system, and when it opened the canal was hailed as a kind of eighth wonder of Europe. The gates are still worked by hand, with lock-keepers pushing long poles to swing them open. A full passage through all five chambers takes about an hour. In 1893, a year after the opening, King Oscar II and Prince Eugen came to see it, and their names and the royal monogram are carved into the rock face above the lower channel.
Did you know? Logs could stay wedged in the rapids for years, and the friction of the grinding timber sometimes made it catch fire.
06 Bingley Five Rise Locks
United Kingdom · 9 km from Bradford53.856° N 1.838° W
Sirenuk · CC BY-SA 3.0 The five locks form a continuous staircase rather than a series of separate chambers spaced apart by open water: the lower gate of each lock also serves as the upper gate of the one below it, so a boat moves directly from one chamber into the next. Over the flight's length of about 320 feet (98 metres), boats are raised or lowered a total of roughly 59 feet 2 inches (18 metres), a gradient of around 1:5 that makes it the steepest flight of locks anywhere on the English and Welsh canal network.
Did you know? A second staircase, the Bingley Three Rise, opened at the same time only a few hundred yards downstream.
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 remarkable canal locks in Europe?
- On our list, Fonseranes Locks, Béziers (France) ranks first, followed by Neptune's Staircase (United Kingdom) and Foxton Locks (United Kingdom).
- Which country has the most canal locks in Europe?
- In our collection, the most come from the United Kingdom (4), France (1) and Norway (1).
- What is a staircase lock?
- A staircase lock is a series of lock chambers built directly against each other, so that the top gate of one chamber is the bottom gate of the next. It lets a canal climb a steep slope in a short distance.
- What is the longest staircase lock in Britain?
- Neptune's Staircase on the Caledonian Canal at Banavie, near Fort William, with eight locks designed by Thomas Telford in the early nineteenth century.
- How does a canal lock work?
- A lock is a watertight chamber with gates at each end. Boats enter, the gates close, and water is let in from above or drained out below until the level matches the next stretch of canal.
- How many canal locks are on this list in Europe?
- The list covers 6 canal locks in 3 countries. The United Kingdom has the most, with 4.