The Most Remarkable Lava Tubes in the World
4 places in 3 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most remarkable lava tubes in the world are Cueva de los Verdes (Spain), Jameos del Agua (Spain) and Manjanggul and Gimnyeonggul Lava Tubes (South Korea). The list covers 4 lava tubes in 3 countries. Spain has the most, with 2. Last updated 13 October 2026.
A lava tube forms when the surface of a river of basalt lava cools into a hard crust while molten rock keeps flowing beneath it. When the eruption ends and the lava drains away, it leaves a tunnel behind, sometimes kilometres long, with smooth walls, ledges marking old flow levels and small lava stalactites hanging from the roof. The remarkable ones add something more: collapsed sections that let in shafts of daylight, walls glazed in shades of red and ochre, or the sea itself reaching inside.
Jameos del Agua and Cueva de los Verdes on Lanzarote belong to one tube system formed by eruptions of the Monte Corona volcano. At Jameos del Agua the artist César Manrique shaped gardens, a saltwater lagoon home to tiny blind white crabs and an auditorium inside the rock. Cueva de los Verdes, once a refuge for islanders from pirate raids, keeps the tube close to its natural state over several levels. Manjanggul on Jeju in South Korea is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site and holds one of the largest known lava columns, and Raufarhólshellir near Reykjavík is one of Iceland's longest lava tubes, with light falling through openings in its roof.
The lava tubes here were selected for how they look and are ranked by beauty. Each has its own text, a photograph with its author named and a marker on the map, and the section also opens country by country on separate pages.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cueva de los Verdes | Lava tube | Spain | |
| 2 | Jameos del Agua | Lava tube | Spain | |
| 3 | Manjanggul and Gimnyeonggul Lava Tubes | Lava tube | South Korea | |
| 4 | Raufarhólshellir | Lava tube | Iceland |
01 Cueva de los Verdes
Spain · 23.3 km from Arrecife29.161° N 13.439° W
Lviatour · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Cueva de los Verdes is a lava tube in the north of Lanzarote, a tunnel left behind when rivers of molten rock from the La Corona volcano flowed towards the sea. As the surface of the flow cooled and hardened into a crust, the lava beneath kept moving and eventually drained away, leaving a hollow passage. The whole system runs for more than seven kilometres from the volcano to the coast and continues under the sea as the Túnel de la Atlántida; in about twenty places the roof has collapsed, forming the openings the islanders call jameos.
Did you know? The tube continues for about 1.5 kilometres beneath the sea, because it formed when sea level was some 80 metres lower than today.
02 Jameos del Agua
Spain · 23.2 km from Arrecife29.157° N 13.432° W
Image by lapping from Pixabay Jameos del Agua is a lava tube that an artist decided to finish. On the north-east coast of Lanzarote, the eruption of the Corona volcano left a tunnel of solidified lava about 6 km long, running from the mountain to the sea and continuing at least 1.5 km beneath the seabed, a submarine stretch known as the Tunnel of Atlantis. Where parts of the roof caved in, they left great open pits that islanders call jameos, a word inherited from the pre-Hispanic population of the Canaries. Three of them lie together in the section closest to the shore: Jameo Chico, Jameo Grande and Jameo de la Cazuela.
Did you know? The lagoon is fed by seawater filtering through cracks in the lava tube, so its level rises and falls with the tides outside.
03 Manjanggul and Gimnyeonggul Lava Tubes
South Korea · 23.1 km from Jeju33.528° N 126.770° E
강형원 · CC BY 4.0 Manjanggul is a tunnel left behind by molten rock. When lava from the Geomunoreum volcano in north-eastern Jeju flowed towards the sea, its surface cooled into a crust while the liquid rock kept moving underneath. When the flow drained away it left a hollow pipe. The main tube of Manjanggul runs for close to 9 km, among the longest lava tubes known, and in places it is more than 20 m high, with two or three storeys of passages stacked on top of each other. Gimnyeonggul, a shorter S-shaped tube near its lower end, was once part of the same channel until lava blocked the passage between them. Together they have been a Korean natural monument since 1962, and they belong to the UNESCO World Heritage site of Jeju Volcanic Island and Lava Tubes.
Did you know? About 30,000 common bent-wing bats roost near the cave's second entrance, the largest bat colony confirmed anywhere in South Korea.
04 Raufarhólshellir
Iceland · 19.6 km from Selfoss63.940° N 21.396° W
Markus Trienke · CC BY-SA 2.0 Raufarhólshellir is one of the longest and most walkable lava tubes in Iceland, a tunnel some 1,360 metres long that runs beneath the lava fields east of the Bláfjöll mountains. It was drained empty a little over five thousand years ago, during the Leitahraun eruption, when a river of molten rock kept flowing inside a crust that had already hardened around it. When the eruption stopped, the liquid core ran out and left the shell behind: a passage that is typically ten metres high and up to thirty metres wide, large enough in places to feel more like a hall than a cave.
Did you know? Among all the lava tubes surveyed in Iceland, Raufarhólshellir ranks fourth in length.
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
- How is a lava tube formed?
- A lava tube forms when the outer surface of a flowing stream of basalt lava cools and hardens while the hot lava inside keeps moving. Once the flow drains away, a hollow tunnel remains.
- What is the most remarkable lava tube in the world?
- On our list, Cueva de los Verdes (Spain) ranks first, followed by Jameos del Agua (Spain) and Manjanggul and Gimnyeonggul Lava Tubes (South Korea).
- Where are the best lava tubes in the world?
- Lava tubes occur in regions of fluid basalt lava, such as Hawaii, Iceland, the Canary Islands and Jeju.
- What is the difference between a lava tube and a limestone cave?
- A limestone cave is dissolved out of rock by water over a very long time, while a lava tube is formed during a single eruption by flowing lava. That is why lava tubes have smooth, rounded walls instead of stalactites of calcite.
- How many lava tubes are on this list in the world?
- The list covers 4 lava tubes in 3 countries. Spain has the most, with 2.