The Most Spectacular Cliffs in Europe

26 places in 12 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Loreley

   Germany · 25.2 km from Koblenz50.139° N 7.729° E

   

   The name is usually traced to an old dialect word for murmuring combined with "ley", rock: the strong current, a small waterfall and a remarkable echo once made the cliff seem to hum. An older tale placed dwarfs in caves inside the rock. The figure everyone now associates with it, however, is a literary invention. In 1801 the Romantic writer Clemens Brentano wrote a ballad about Lore Lay, a woman whose beauty brought men to ruin and who fell to her death from the rock. In 1824 Heinrich Heine reworked the theme into his poem "Die Lorelei", in which a golden-haired maiden sits combing her hair high above the river and her song lures boatmen onto the rocks.

   Did you know? The perils of this stretch are said to be why Saint Goar settled here, devoting himself to rescuing and nursing shipwrecked boatmen.

   More about Loreley →

2. 02 White Cliffs of Dover

   United Kingdom · 4 km from Dover51.135° N 1.357° E

   

   The cliffs are the first sight of England from the sea and have been read as a symbol for as long as people have written about them. Julius Caesar, arriving in 55 BC, found them lined with armed Britons and sailed on to land elsewhere. The old name Albion is thought to come from the Latin for white. Shakespeare set a scene of King Lear on a Dover cliff. In the Second World War they were the welcome sight for troops returning from Dunkirk, and Vera Lynn's 1942 recording of The White Cliffs of Dover made them a national emblem; she campaigned at 100 to help buy the clifftop for the nation.

   Did you know? In places the chalk beds behind the cliff face are up to 500 metres thick, laid down at a rate of only about half a millimetre a year.

   More about White Cliffs of Dover →

3. 03 Seven Sisters Cliffs, Sussex

   Seven Sisters

   United Kingdom · 24.5 km from Brighton50.760° N 0.160° E

   

   The cliffs stay dazzlingly white because they never stop falling. The soft chalk retreats on average by a few tens of centimetres a year, but unevenly, in sudden collapses after storms and heavy rain, and each fall exposes a fresh face before grass or weathering can dull it. That same instability is why the best views are from a distance rather than from the crumbling edge.

   Did you know? Film crews often use the Seven Sisters to stand in for the White Cliffs of Dover, because the Dover cliffs are protected from erosion and are slowly turning green.

   More about Seven Sisters Cliffs, Sussex →

4. 04 Cirque de Gavarnie

   France42.695° N 0.009° W

   

   The rim is a procession of high summits. Pic du Marboré is the highest of them, at 3,248 metres, flanked by the Casque and the Tour du Marboré and by the Astazou peaks; small relict glaciers still cling to the upper ledges. Nearby, the skyline is broken by the Brèche de Roland, a sharp notch about 2,800 metres up that local legend credits to a stroke of the sword of Roland, Charlemagne's nephew. On the Spanish side the same limestone massif continues into Ordesa and Monte Perdido, and the two together were inscribed by UNESCO in 1997 as the Pyrénées – Mont Perdu World Heritage Site. The cirque also lies within the Pyrénées National Park, founded in 1967.

   Did you know? The Grande Cascade is the highest waterfall in mainland France; its tallest single leap alone measures about 281 metres.

   More about Cirque de Gavarnie →

5. 05 Møns Klint

   Denmark54.964° N 12.552° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The chalk is made of the microscopic skeletons of coccolithophores, plankton that settled on the seabed more than 70 million years ago. During the last ice age, glaciers pressing against the chalk bed pushed it up and folded it into ridges and blocks, which is why the strata here tilt and buckle instead of lying flat. When the ice melted, the cliffs were exposed, and the sea has been cutting them back ever since. Falls are frequent: a prominent pinnacle, the Sommerspiret, collapsed in 1998, and a landslide in 2007 pushed a 300-metre tongue of chalk and toppled trees out into the sea. The same erosion keeps exposing fossils, and hunting for them on the beach is part of a visit.

   Did you know? The cliffs only emerged from beneath the retreating ice roughly 11,000 years ago, making the landscape young despite its ancient rock.

   More about Møns Klint →

6. 06 Cliffs of Moher

   Ireland52.936° N 9.471° W

   

   The sea is still cutting the cliffs back, and its work is visible everywhere: caves, arches and stacks. Below O'Brien's Tower stands Branaunmore, a 67 m sea stack that was once part of the cliff, and a large sea arch opens beneath Hag's Head. The ledges are an Important Bird Area, with an estimated 30,000 pairs of birds of more than twenty species in peak season, including razorbills and colonies of Atlantic puffins, especially on little Goat Island. From the top you can look out to the Aran Islands in Galway Bay, the mountains of Connemara to the north and Loop Head to the south.

   Did you know? In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sea cave where Harry and Dumbledore hunt for a Horcrux was filmed at the cliffs.

   More about Cliffs of Moher →

7. 07 Preikestolen

   Norway · 29.2 km from Stavanger58.987° N 6.187° E

   

   The old local name was Hyvlatonnå, "the plane's tooth". The name Prekestolen, "the pulpit", was coined around 1900 by the Stavanger Trekking Association, which wanted to promote the site to walkers; the spelling with an "i" was adopted later to match the local written standard. A century on, it has become one of the most visited natural sights in Norway, with around 300,000 visitors in 2024. To cope with the traffic, the path was rebuilt between 2013 and 2016 by a team of Nepalese Sherpas, widening sections where walkers used to back up. The cliff has since appeared in the climax of "Mission: Impossible – Fallout".

   Did you know? Cans of compressed air bottled at Lysefjorden and Preikestolen have been sold as souvenirs, mostly to buyers in China.

   More about Preikestolen →

8. 08 Beinisvørð

   Faroe Islands61.426° N 6.767° W

   

   The cliff sits between the villages of Lopra and Sumba, and it has shaped life in Sumba for generations. The ledges are nesting grounds for great numbers of seabirds, and men from the village used to be lowered on ropes down the face to take birds and eggs, a practice known as sigging; it fed families through the winter and cost lives, some of them from falling stones. In 1975 part of the face collapsed, sweeping away nesting ledges together with the local names that fowlers had given to every shelf and gully. The poets Poul F. Joensen and Janus Djurhuus both wrote about Beinisvørð, and the cliff became something of an emblem of Faroese identity; it appeared on a Faroese stamp in 1989.

   Did you know? The Sumba tunnel, opened in 1997, runs straight through the mountain for 3,240 metres.

   More about Beinisvørð →

9. 09 Pointe du Raz

   France48.040° N 4.741° W

   

   That strait gives the headland its name. The Raz de Sein, the passage between the point and the Île de Sein, is a notoriously dangerous stretch of water; the word raz, which the Bretons took from the Norman language, shares its origin with the English word race, meaning a strong current, both going back to Old Norse. To guide ships through it, the lighthouse of La Vieille, "the Old Woman", was built on the Gorlebella rock just off the point. Planning began in 1861, but fierce tides allowed work only for part of each year, and the light was first lit in 1887. It is one of the remote French sea lights that keepers called "hells", and it was among the last in France to be automated, in 1995.

   Did you know? To restore the site, the hotels on the point were demolished in 1996 and the shopping centre in 1997, with services moved 800 metres inland.

   More about Pointe du Raz →

10. 10 Malham Cove

    United Kingdom54.071° N 2.159° W

    

    Today the water travels underground. Malham Beck, rising on Malham Moor, emerges from a cave at the foot of the cliff, while the outflow of Malham Tarn, further north, sinks into the limestone before reaching the cove and reappears only south of the village. Dye tests showed that the two streams cross behind the cliff without mixing – evidence of a cave system that divers have followed for more than a kilometre and that, judging by stalagmites at least 27,000 years old, existed before the last glaciation. Only rarely does the old waterfall return: after the torrential rain of Storm Desmond in December 2015 water spilled over the top, for what is thought to be the first time since 1824.

    Did you know? The cliff is made of Great Scar Limestone, laid down in warm tropical seas in the early Carboniferous, more than 330 million years ago.

    More about Malham Cove →

11. 11 Königsstuhl (Rügen)

    Königsstuhl

    Germany54.573° N 13.662° E

    

    The cliffs belong to the Rügen Chalk and are constantly being worn back by the sea, frost and thaw; in February 2005 the famous Wissower Klinken, a neighbouring pinnacle of chalk, collapsed into the Baltic, and fresh white scars still open along the coast. The forests that run right up to the edge are among the old beech woods of Europe inscribed by UNESCO in 2011, and the cliffs and woods together form Jasmund National Park, founded in 1990 and the smallest national park in Germany. Yews, wild service trees and orchids grow here, and white-tailed eagles and peregrine falcons hunt along the cliffs.

    Did you know? The chalk of the cliff formed roughly 70 million years ago, in the Maastrichtian age at the very end of the Cretaceous, from a fine, highly porous limestone.

    More about Königsstuhl (Rügen) →

12. 12 Acantilados de Los Gigantes

    Spain28.297° N 16.856° W

    

    Where those ravines meet the water they leave small coves of sand or gravel that are hard to reach on foot and are mostly visited by boat. The cliffs lie within the Teno Rural Park and are shared between the municipalities of Buenavista del Norte, which holds most of them, and Santiago del Teide. Unlike the walls above, the seabed at their foot is shallow, around 30 metres deep, and its relative isolation has left it rich in marine life that draws divers.

    Did you know? Tenerife grew from three old shield volcanoes, Roque del Conde, Teno and Anaga, which were later joined by the younger volcanic complex around Teide.

    More about Acantilados de Los Gigantes →

13. 13 Troll Wall

    Norway62.482° N 7.729° E

    

    The wall was first climbed in 1965, when a Norwegian team and a British team reached the top by separate routes a day apart; the British line, the Rimmon Route, became the favourite until the 1998 rockfalls. Since then the face has seen a first winter ascent in 1974 by the Polish climber Wojciech Kurtyka, a first free ascent in 1979, and a series of multi-day big-wall routes on its steepest section, several of them later free-climbed by local climbers. Cold, damp weather and the looseness of the rock make new routes rare.

    Did you know? The first BASE jump from the wall was made in 1980 by the Finnish jumper Jorma Öster.

    More about Troll Wall →

14. 14 Creux du Van

    Switzerland · 16.4 km from Neuchâtel46.937° N 6.728° E

    

    The cirque lies on the north side of Le Soliat, on the border between the cantons of Neuchâtel and Vaud above the Val de Travers. It was shaped during and after the last ice ages, as glaciers and meltwater cut into the layered rock and the cliffs retreated through erosion; until recently the ground beneath it held patches of permafrost. The floor of the bowl is covered with moraine and rockfall debris on which fir and beech grow, and in the middle rises the spring of the Fontaine Froide, whose water keeps a steady 4 °C all year.

    Did you know? The vertical upper walls are Kimmeridgian limestone about 150 metres thick, resting on softer marly layers that erode more easily beneath them.

    More about Creux du Van →

15. 15 Scala dei Turchi

    Italy37.290° N 13.473° E

    

    Marl is a soft sedimentary rock made of clay and the calcareous remains of microscopic plankton, and this outcrop was laid down in the Lower Pliocene, after the Zanclean flood had refilled the dried-out Mediterranean basin. Its softness is what gives the cliff its curves, and also what makes it fragile: every winter storm and every footstep wears the surface a little further. The smooth, sinuous terraces are best appreciated from a little distance, where the stepped profile of the whole cliff can be read at once.

    Did you know? Its marls belong to the Trubi Formation, part of the reference section used since 1991 to build the astronomically tuned timescale of the Pliocene.

    More about Scala dei Turchi →

16. 16 Ponta da Piedade

    Portugal · 13.4 km from Portimão37.079° N 8.668° W

    

    The colours are what most people remember: ochre, honey and rust in the cliffs, cut by bands of paler stone, against water that ranges from emerald in the shallows to deep blue offshore. The cliffs reach about 20 metres along much of the shore and about 40 metres at the cape itself. Below them the sea has hollowed out caves and tunnels that open onto one another, so that a small boat can pass from one grotto into the next under natural vaults; one of them is named after the Portuguese poet Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen. Early morning and late afternoon are the best times to see the rock glow, when the low sun lights up the faces of the stacks.

    Did you know? From 1663 until 1821 a small artillery battery on the point guarded the approaches to Lagos as part of the town's chain of coastal forts.

    More about Ponta da Piedade →

17. 17 Hornelen

    Norway61.842° N 5.247° E

    

    The mountain stands at the eastern end of Bremangerlandet, an island in Bremanger Municipality in Vestland county. Hornelen is built of sandstone laid down in the Devonian period, around 400 million years ago, in a basin that geologists call the Hornelen Basin. The layered beds of this sandstone give the cliff its banded face, and the Devonian fields of western Norway are an important chapter in the geological history of the country.

    Did you know? The basin's sandstone is arranged in repeating cycles roughly 100 metres thick, each laid down by an ancient river system that drained towards the west.

    More about Hornelen →

18. 18 Slieve League

    Ireland54.638° N 8.681° W

    

    The mountain has been a place of pilgrimage for well over a thousand years. Tradition credits a sixth-century hermit, Aedh Mac Bric, with founding a monastic settlement near the summit; the remains of a small chapel, a holy well and stone huts in the Celtic manner can still be found there. The old pilgrims' route, the Pilgrim's Path or Casán na Naomh, climbs through the interior of the mountain past these ruins, a mass rock and a Napoleonic-era signal tower.

    Did you know? The Irish name Sliabh Liag is usually explained as "mountain of stone pillars", a fitting description of its weathered rock faces.

    More about Slieve League →

19. 19 Látrabjarg

    Iceland65.497° N 24.397° W

    

    In summer the air along the edge is thick with birds. Guillemots and razorbills pack the narrow ledges, and Látrabjarg holds a very large share of the world's razorbills; kittiwakes and gannets wheel below. The birds everyone comes for, though, are the puffins, which dig their burrows in the turf right at the top of the cliff and are famously unbothered by people lying quietly a few metres away. The cliff edge is fragile and undercut, so the views are best taken from a safe distance back from the rim.

    Did you know? That documentary, made by the Icelandic filmmaker Óskar Gíslason and commissioned by the national lifesaving association, was released in several languages and shown around the world.

    More about Látrabjarg →

20. 20 Cabo Girão

    Portugal · 11.7 km from Funchal32.656° N 17.004° W

    

    The view from the top is vertiginous in the literal sense. Since October 2012 a glass-floored skywalk has projected over the edge, so that visitors stand directly above the drop and look down past their feet to the surf. Along the coast the eye runs east towards Câmara de Lobos and Funchal and west along the high green south shore. Just behind the viewpoint stands the chapel of Nossa Senhora de Fátima, built in 1974 on the site of an earlier chapel of 1931.

    Did you know? The quarry at the base of Cabo Girão was worked until the 1980s, when demand for its stone finally ceased.

    More about Cabo Girão →

21. 21 Cape Enniberg

    Enniberg

    Faroe Islands · 16.3 km from Klaksvík62.383° N 6.567° W

    

    Enniberg belongs to the island of Viðoy, the most northeasterly of the Faroes, a long ridge of mountains that drops abruptly on almost every side. Just to the south rises Villingadalsfjall, at 844 metres the highest summit on the island, and at its southern foot lies the village of Viðareiði, the northernmost settlement in the Faroes. The scenery is typical of the islands' north: dark basalt layered like the pages of a book, green grass running up to the edges of the drops, and narrow sounds separating island from island.

    Did you know? The face is far from solid basalt: bands of lava alternate with crumbly layers of volcanic ash and steep grass, which made the first ascent notoriously loose and dangerous.

    More about Cape Enniberg →

22. 22 Berggasthaus Äscher

    Switzerland · 5.6 km from Appenzell47.283° N 9.414° E

    

    The setting has a long human history. The inn stands beside the Wildkirchli, a group of three linked caves where excavations in the early twentieth century uncovered stone tools left by Neanderthal hunters around 40,000 years ago, along with cave-bear bones even older; the identification of these finds was the first evidence of Neanderthals in the Appenzell Alps. In 1658 the Appenzell priest Paulus Ulmann founded a chapel in one of the caves and a hermitage in another, and a succession of hermits lived here, offering food and shelter to pilgrims. After the last hermit died in 1851 the tradition of hospitality continued as an inn.

    Did you know? Joseph Viktor von Scheffel's 1855 novel Ekkehard sends its hero to live as a hermit at Wildkirchli, which helped make the caves famous.

    More about Berggasthaus Äscher →

23. 23 Itzurun

    Spain · 22.9 km from Donostia-San Sebastián43.300° N 2.261° W

    

    The rocks of Itzurun hold a special place in geology. The International Union of Geological Sciences chose the Zumaia section at this beach as the global reference point – the "golden spike" – for the base of two stages of the Paleocene epoch, the Selandian, about 61.6 million years ago, and the Thanetian, about 59.2 million years ago. Geologists anywhere in the world who want to define those boundaries compare their rocks with the layers exposed here. Ammonite fossils occur in the surrounding cliffs, and at low tide the stone platforms in front of the beach reveal the striped bedding in long ribs running out to sea.

    Did you know? Holding two global boundary markers at one site is very rare; Basque sources name only Meishan in China as another place with two such golden spikes.

    More about Itzurun →

24. 24 Falaises Soubeyranes

    France · 19.6 km from Marseille43.184° N 5.563° E

    

    What sets these cliffs apart from the white limestone calanques further west is their colour and layering. The rock is a stack of limestone, sandstone and puddingstone, a natural conglomerate of rounded pebbles cemented together. Around 80 million years ago a river poured gravel and fine sediment into a warm sea here, building an underwater fan that was later lifted out of the water to form the massif. Wind and sea have since carved its face into ledges, hollows and overhangs, and the varied strata and fossils have made the site well known to geologists.

    Did you know? Their name comes from a Provençal word meaning sovereign.

    More about Falaises Soubeyranes →

25. 25 Les Pénitents des Mées

    Les Pénitents

    France44.027° N 5.986° E

    

    The pillars are made of a coarse conglomerate known in French as poudingue: river pebbles and gravel torn from the rising Alps and cemented together several million years ago, in the Miocene and Pliocene epochs. Rain and frost have since cut deep gullies into this thick layer, isolating the cones and blades that now stand above the village. Because the conglomerate is loosely bound, the shapes keep changing; in December 2019 part of one pillar broke away and fell on the edge of Les Mées. The site is a protected landscape and lies at one of the entrances to the Haute-Provence geological reserve, while the cliffs and scrub around it shelter a varied wildlife, including the eagle owl.

    Did you know? The tallest of the pillars rises more than 100 metres.

    More about Les Pénitents des Mées →

26. 26 Étretat Cliffs

    Site d'Étretat

    France · 23.3 km from Le Havre49.706° N 0.195° E

    

    Look closely at the cliff faces and they are striped with dark lines of flint nodules set in the pale chalk, a record of the sea floor that laid them down. The rock is riddled with passages too. The Trou à l'Homme, a karst tunnel at the foot of the Falaise d'Aval, takes its name from a local story of a Swedish sailor washed into it after a shipwreck in 1792. Above, the Chambre des Demoiselles is a small grotto tied to another legend, and it plays a part in Maurice Leblanc's 1909 Arsène Lupin novel L'Aiguille creuse, which imagined the Needle as a hollow treasure-house.

    Did you know? The cliffs are made of chalk from the Turonian and Coniacian stages of the Late Cretaceous, laid down on a sea floor roughly 90 million years ago.

    More about Étretat Cliffs →