The Most Remarkable UNESCO-Listed Rock Art Sites in the World
5 places in 5 countries · updated 6 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most remarkable UNESCO-listed rock art sites in the world are Tanum Rock Carvings (Sweden), Rock carvings at Alta (Norway) and Twyfelfontein (Namibia). The list covers 5 UNESCO-listed rock art sites in 5 countries. Namibia has the most, with 1. Last updated 6 October 2026.
Rock art is the oldest picture-making that still sits where it was made. Unlike paintings in a museum, petroglyphs belong to their setting: a smooth slab polished by glaciers, a sandstone outcrop above a dry riverbed, a cliff over a stream. The sites recognised by UNESCO stand out for the sheer density of their images and for what they record, from the animals of the Ice Age to the boats, weapons and rituals of Bronze Age farmers and the whale hunts of early coastal peoples.
Scandinavia holds two of the great concentrations. At Tanum in western Sweden, Bronze Age carvers covered rock faces with ships, warriors, ploughing scenes and couples, many now picked out in red paint so they can be read. Around the fjord at Alta in the far north of Norway, thousands of figures of reindeer, elk, boats and hunters were carved over several millennia by people living close to the Arctic coast.
Elsewhere the subjects change with the land. Twyfelfontein in Namibia gathers thousands of engravings of rhinoceros, giraffe, lions and animal tracks on sandstone slabs, and it became the country's first World Heritage Site. In Portugal's Côa Valley, open-air engravings of horses, aurochs and ibex from the Upper Palaeolithic came to light in the 1990s during work on a dam that was then abandoned to save them. At Bangudae in southeastern Korea, a cliff above a stream carries whales, hunters and boats, among the earliest known depictions of whaling anywhere.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tanum Rock Carvings | Petroglyph | Sweden | ✓ |
| 2 | Rock carvings at Alta | Petroglyph | Norway | ✓ |
| 3 | Twyfelfontein | Petroglyph | Namibia | ✓ |
| 4 | Côa Valley Rock Art | Petroglyph | Portugal | ✓ |
| 5 | Bangudae Petroglyphs | Petroglyph | South Korea | ✓ |
01 Tanum Rock Carvings
Hällristningsområdet i Tanum
Sweden58.700° N 11.336° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Fred J · Public domain In the granite hills around Tanumshede, in the province of Bohuslän on Sweden's west coast, thousands of figures were hammered into smooth rock faces during the Nordic Bronze Age, roughly between 1700 and 300 BC. They are spread over some 600 panels along a belt of about 25 kilometres, and together they form one of the richest collections of prehistoric rock art in Europe, a World Heritage Site since 1994.
Did you know? At Litsleby a spear-wielding figure 2.3 metres tall, the so-called Spear God, is the largest carved human figure in northern Europe.
02 Rock carvings at Alta
Norway · 3 km from Alta69.947° N 23.188° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Andreas Haldorsen · CC BY-SA 4.0 When the first figures were spotted on the shore rocks of Alta in the autumn of 1973, nobody expected the scale of what followed. More than 6,000 carvings have since been found at several sites around the head of the Altafjord in Finnmark, and the site is Norway's only prehistoric World Heritage Site, inscribed in 1985.
Did you know? The World Heritage property groups five sites around the fjord: Jiepmaluokta, Storsteines, Kåfjord, Amtmannsnes and Transfarelv.
03 Twyfelfontein
Namibia20.596° S 14.373° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Martin Cígler · CC BY-SA 3.0 Twyfelfontein is a narrow valley of red sandstone in Namibia's Kunene Region, in the country once known as Damaraland, and its rocks carry one of the largest concentrations of engraved rock art in Africa.
Did you know? Some engravings were once read as a sea lion and penguins, hinting at journeys to a coast over 100 km away, though later surveys doubt this.
04 Côa Valley Rock Art
Parque Arqueológico do Côa
Portugal41.033° N 7.117° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Reino Baptista · CC BY-SA 4.0 In the steep, dry valley of the Côa River in northeastern Portugal, among vineyards, hundreds of animals are carved, incised and pecked into the rock outcrops along the riverbanks. Horses, aurochs, red deer and ibex walk, graze and turn their heads across the rock faces, some pieced out in bold hammered outlines, others in lines so fine they appear only when low sun rakes across the stone.
Did you know? At Fariseu a panel of 82 engraved animals was found partly sealed under undisturbed Ice Age sediment layers, proving the figures were carved more than about 21,000 years ago.
05 Bangudae Petroglyphs
South Korea · 13.9 km from Ulsan35.604° N 129.178° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Ulsan Petroglyph Museum · CC BY-SA 3.0 On a sheer rock face above a bend of the Daegokcheon stream in Ulsan, someone began carving whales around seven thousand years ago — and people kept adding to the panel for millennia. The main surface at Bangudae Terrace is only about eight metres wide and five high, yet it holds some three hundred engraved figures, among the richest prehistoric image walls in East Asia.
Did you know? One carving shows a mother grey whale carrying her calf on her back, the way the species lifts its young to the surface to breathe.
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 UNESCO-listed rock art sites in the world?
- On our list, Tanum Rock Carvings (Sweden) ranks first, followed by Rock carvings at Alta (Norway) and Twyfelfontein (Namibia).
- Which country has the most UNESCO-listed rock art sites in the world?
- In our collection, the most come from Namibia (1), Norway (1) and Portugal (1).
- What is the difference between a petroglyph and a pictograph?
- A petroglyph is cut, pecked or scratched into the rock surface, while a pictograph is painted onto it with pigment. Many carved sites, such as Tanum, are painted today only to make the figures easier to see.
- How old is the Côa Valley rock art?
- The oldest engravings were made in the Upper Palaeolithic, more than 20,000 years ago, which makes the valley one of the largest groups of open-air Ice Age art known.
- Why are the Bangudae Petroglyphs important?
- The carvings on the Bangudae cliff near Ulsan include detailed whales and hunters in boats, considered some of the earliest depictions of whaling in the world.
- How many UNESCO-listed rock art sites are on this list in the world?
- The list covers 5 UNESCO-listed rock art sites in 5 countries. Namibia has the most, with 1.