The 32 Best Adventures in Europe

The Matterhorn's near-perfect pyramidal peak has made it one of the most recognised mountains in the world and the symbol of the Swiss Alps.

Rising 4,478 metres above the car-free village of Zermatt, it is reflected in the Riffelsee lake during clear summer mornings.

Cinque Terre is a string of five centuries-old fishing villages clinging to the cliffs of the Italian Riviera, connected by scenic hiking trails above the Ligurian Sea.

Manarola, Vernazza, Corniglia, Monterosso, and Riomaggiore tumble down their respective cliff faces in a cascade of colourful buildings.

Trolltunga, meaning Troll's Tongue, is a spectacular horizontal rock formation that juts 700 metres above Lake Ringedalsvatnet in western Norway.

The 27-kilometre return hike to reach it passes through some of Norway's most dramatic fjord landscape, ascending over 1,000 metres in elevation.

A flat granite plateau juts out 604 metres above the Lysefjord, ending in a sheer drop with the fjord stretching away beyond it.

The hike climbs around 350 metres over four kilometres, steep and rocky in places but manageable for most reasonably fit walkers in a few hours.

Nothing about the scale of the drop registers properly until you are standing at the edge of it.

Svalbard is a remote Norwegian archipelago deep in the Arctic Ocean, roughly 60% covered by glaciers and home to more polar bears than people.

Longyearbyen, the main settlement, is the base for dog-sledding, snowmobiling and boat trips past calving glaciers and drifting sea ice, with the midnight sun in summer and polar night and northern lights in winter.

Almost everything beyond town requires an armed guide, which shapes the whole experience.

A cogwheel railway climbs through solid rock to a saddle between the Eiger and Mönch, 3,454 metres up, where the "Top of Europe" station opens onto the Aletsch Glacier, the largest ice stream in the Alps.

An ice palace, observation deck, and snow terrace fill out the visit, though thin air and shifting weather can erase the view without warning.

The Grossglockner High Alpine Road climbs through 36 hairpin bends to over 2,500 metres, threading past Austria's highest peak and ending at a viewpoint over the Pasterze, the country's largest glacier.

Marmots and ibex are a common sight along the route, and a dozen or so panoramic pull-offs give reason to stop every few kilometres.

The road is only open from May to October, closing once snow makes the high pass impassable.

A volcanic island in the mid-Atlantic nicknamed the "floating garden," Madeira packs cloud forest, terraced vineyards, and sea cliffs over 500 metres tall into an area smaller than greater London.

A 19th-century irrigation network of levadas laces the interior with walking trails through laurel forest and past hidden waterfalls, while a glass skywalk cantilevers out over Cabo Girão, one of Europe's highest sea cliffs.

The Sa Calobra climb switchbacks up 26 hairpins through the limestone Serra de Tramuntana, including a spiralling loop where the road passes beneath itself, before dropping to a hidden cove on Mallorca's northwest coast.

Wider routes through the range link terraced olive groves, the monastery at Lluc and the ridge-top village of Deia.

The road is a pilgrimage climb for road cyclists and one of Europe's most celebrated stretches of tarmac.

The Atlantic Road links a scatter of skerries and islets off Norway's west coast on an 8km run of bridges and causeways, built to look like it dives straight into the sea.

The Storseisundet Bridge is the famous shot, but the whole stretch is a slow, low-lying drive between open ocean on both sides, with fishing hamlets and pull-offs for scrambling over the rocks.

Storms send waves over the road, which locals treat as a spectator sport in autumn.

A domed sandstone chamber on the Algarve coast with its own crescent of beach and a circular hole in the roof that drops a column of sunlight onto the sand.

It can only be reached from the water, by kayak, paddleboard or tour boat, since swimming across from the neighbouring beach is now restricted.

Europe's deepest canyon plunges 700 meters, with the turquoise Verdon River winding through limestone walls below.

Scenic clifftop drives, hiking trails, and kayaking routes make it one of France's most dramatic natural landscapes, far quieter than the Côte d'Azur an hour south.

A roughly 170km hut-to-hut circuit around the Mont Blanc massif through France, Italy and Switzerland, climbing about 10,000m of ascent past glaciers, alpine lakes and larch forest.

Val Ferret and the Aiguilles Rouges give some of the best full-on views of Mont Blanc's summit.

Most walkers take 7-11 days, staying in refuges that range from rustic to modernised.

Huts fill fast in July and August.

Europe's tallest and most active volcano, looming over Sicily's east coast and erupting regularly enough that lava flows are a near-yearly event visible from Catania on clear nights.

Cable cars and 4x4 tours climb partway up its barren, ash-grey upper slopes, where guided hikes reach steaming craters and fields of hardened lava from past eruptions.

Vineyards ring its lower slopes, producing distinctive wines grown in volcanic soil, a striking contrast to the desolation higher up.

La Loire a Velo's flat, dedicated paths link the Loire Valley's great chateaux, threading past Chambord's fairy-tale turrets, Chenonceau's arches over the Cher and Amboise's clifftop fortress.

Riders pass through stone villages, vineyards and troglodyte cave dwellings carved into tufa cliffs along the way.

Short, modular loops between 10 and 45km make it easy to see one chateau or several in a single day.

The Zugspitze is Germany's highest peak, and a cable car climbs almost straight from the valley town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen to its summit, where the view on a clear day takes in more than 400 peaks across Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy.

A small glacier survives near the top, along with a ski area that operates into summer, and the border with Austria runs directly across the summit platform.

The Krimml Waterfalls drop 380 metres in three tiers down a forested mountainside in the Hohe Tauern National Park, among the highest waterfalls in Europe.

A well-graded path climbs alongside the falls through spray-cooled air, with viewing platforms at each tier and a small waterfall-themed nature trail for families lower down.

On sunny mornings, rainbows form regularly in the mist at the base of the lower tier.

Europe's largest and best-preserved river delta is a maze of reed-lined channels, lakes and marshland where the Danube meets the Black Sea.

Boat trips glide past pelicans, herons and over 300 other bird species in a UNESCO-protected wilderness.

Traditional fishing villages built on stilts add a lived-in texture to the wildlife-watching, and the sheer scale of untouched wetland is rare anywhere in Europe.

The Nordkette range rises so steeply above Innsbruck that a cable car runs directly from the edge of the old town to a mountain station above 2,300 metres in under 20 minutes.

From the top, the view takes in the Alpine capital below and rows of peaks stretching into Italy and Germany, and hiking trails and via ferrata routes continue further up the ridge.

A flat, paved path traces the Danube's south bank through the Wachau, a UNESCO-listed valley of terraced vineyards, apricot orchards and medieval river towns between Melk and Krems.

Riders pass beneath Durnstein's ruined castle, where Richard the Lionheart was once imprisoned, while Melk's baroque abbey looms over the starting point.

The gentle downhill gradient and dedicated bike lane make it an easy half-day ride at any fitness level.

A dramatic rocky island 12km off the Irish coast, home to a 6th-century monastic settlement perched 200 meters above the Atlantic.

Narrow stone stairways climb to beehive-shaped huts where monks lived in near-total isolation for centuries, and the island later appeared in Star Wars.

Slovenia's only national park protects nearly the entire Julian Alps range, centered on Mount Triglav, the country's highest peak and a genuine point of national identity.

Beyond the summit trek, the park holds the emerald Soča River valley, dramatic gorges, alpine lakes and the Vršič Pass's hairpin mountain road — the backbone of Slovenia's outdoor-adventure reputation, with hiking, rafting and via ferrata routes for every level.

North Cape is a 307-metre cliff on the northern tip of Magerøya island, marketed for two centuries as the northernmost point of mainland Europe - a technicality it doesn't quite hold, but the setting is real.

A visitor centre and a globe monument sit on the plateau above the Barents Sea, with the midnight sun visible from mid-May to late July.

The long, treeless drive across open Arctic tundra is as much a part of it as the cape itself.

This wild stretch of County Galway packs bog, mountain, lake and rugged Atlantic coastline into one thinly populated region, its landscape barely touched since the days it inspired painters and poets.

Connemara National Park's quartzite peaks, the Sky Road's cliff-edge drive out of Clifden, and Kylemore Abbey beside its own lake are the anchor points, but much of the appeal is simply driving or hiking through empty, dramatic terrain.

The Soča River runs an almost unreal emerald-turquoise color through this alpine valley in Slovenia's northwest, framed by the Julian Alps and threaded with World War I trench remnants from the Isonzo Front.

Whitewater rafting, kayaking and canyoning draw travelers to some of Europe's cleanest, coldest alpine water, while quieter trails and the small town of Kobarid offer a slower pace with WWI history layered into the landscape.

Pravčická brána is the largest natural sandstone arch in Europe, a 16-metre stone bridge rising from the forested plateau of Bohemian Switzerland National Park near the German border.

Closed to walkers since 1982 to halt erosion, it's instead viewed from three platforms and the 19th-century Sokolí hnízdo chalet built into the rock beneath it.

Reaching it means a steady uphill hike from Hřensko.

A glacier-carved valley in the Wicklow Mountains holds two lakes and the ruins of a 6th-century monastic settlement founded by St Kevin, including a remarkably intact round tower.

Trails loop around both lakes and climb into the surrounding hills, from a flat 30-minute stroll to a full afternoon's hike up to the Spinc ridge.

The mix of early-Christian ruins and scenic hiking makes it one of the most complete day trips from Dublin.

A 55km highland traverse from the rhyolite hot-spring valley of Landmannalaugar to the birch forest of Thorsmork, crossing black lava fields, steaming fumaroles and glacial river fords along the way.

Colour shifts constantly underfoot, from mineral-streaked mountains to green moss and white snow patches even in summer.

Mountain huts break the route into four days, though camping is also allowed alongside each hut.

A small, secluded tarn on the shoulder of Haystacks fell in the Lake District, where guidebook author Alfred Wainwright chose to have his ashes scattered.

Reached only on foot, it offers a quiet, mirror-still pool ringed by fells with none of the crowds of the district's bigger lakes.

A wooden walkway clings to the cliff face above the Radovna River as it churns turquoise through this narrow limestone gorge, just a few kilometers from Lake Bled.

The 1.

6-kilometer boardwalk crosses the river repeatedly on small bridges before ending at the Šum Waterfall — an easy, well-engineered walk, but the gorge's tight, dramatic walls make it feel far wilder than its accessibility suggests.

Copenhagen's 400km network of raised, kerb-separated cycle tracks makes riding the easiest way to see the city, from Nyhavn's canal houses to the harbour baths and Christiania.

Dedicated bicycle bridges and traffic lights timed for cyclists mean two-wheeled traffic genuinely outnumbers cars downtown.

Hotel and station bike rental is everywhere, and the flat terrain suits complete beginners.

Český ráj (Bohemian Paradise) is the Czech Republic's oldest protected landscape, a UNESCO Global Geopark of sandstone rock towers, castle ruins and pine forest ninety minutes from Prague.

Its best-known corner, Prachovské skály, threads narrow rock corridors and wooden stairways past viewpoints over layered stone pinnacles, while the twin-peaked ruin of Trosky Castle marks the skyline for miles around.