The 16 Most Breathtaking Canyons in The World

A slot canyon on Navajo land near Page, carved by flash floods into smooth, fluted sandstone walls that narrow to a few feet apart overhead.

Around midday, shafts of sunlight drop through the openings above and light the orange rock from within.

Access is only with a Navajo guide on a timed walk through either Upper or Lower Antelope, and the canyon closes without warning whenever rain threatens upstream.

The Grand Canyon is one of the world's great natural wonders — 446 kilometres long, up to 29 kilometres wide, and over 1,800 metres deep, carved over millions of years by the Colorado River.

The layered bands of red rock reveal two billion years of geological history and glow with extraordinary colour at sunrise and sunset.

Horseshoe Bend is the Colorado River's most famous U-turn: a sheer 300-metre drop to an emerald river looping around a sandstone butte.

The overlook delivers one of the American Southwest's great views for a 15-minute walk from the car park.

There's no railing along most of the rim, which keeps the vertigo, and the adrenaline, honest.

Blyde River Canyon is one of the largest canyons in the world, the centrepiece of South Africa's Panorama Route, a red-rock gorge cut through the Mpumalanga escarpment.

Viewpoints along the rim look down on the Three Rondavels rock formations and the canyon's dammed river bend, while short walks lead to Bourke's Luck Potholes and God's Window.

It is a self-drive destination best covered over a full day of short stops rather than one overlook.

The second-largest canyon on Earth cuts a 160km gash through the Namibian desert, its layered rock walls dropping 550 metres to the seasonal Fish River below.

A multi-day hike along the canyon floor is one of Southern Africa's classic treks, but the main viewpoint at Hobas delivers the scale in a single sweeping look without any walking required.

Sunset turns the canyon's rust-red rock a deep orange.

One of the world's deepest canyons slices through the Peruvian Andes, its terraced walls farmed by local communities for centuries before the Incas ever arrived.

Andean condors ride the morning thermals at Cruz del Condor, often gliding within metres of the viewpoint's edge.

Traditional villages along the canyon rim still weave and dress in pre-Columbian styles rarely seen elsewhere in Peru.

Red sandstone spires and narrow corridors give this Central Asian canyon its nickname, the Valley of Castles, carved by the Charyn River over 12 million years.

Often compared to a miniature Grand Canyon, it draws a fraction of the visitors despite comparably dramatic scenery.

Walking the valley floor between the eroded rock towers is the main draw, especially in the low light of early evening.

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.

Sheer limestone walls rise up to 1,000 metres above the Grijalva River in this dramatic Chiapas canyon, explored almost entirely by boat.

Crocodiles bask on the riverbanks and spider monkeys move through trees clinging to the cliff face, visible at close range from the water.

A formation locally called the Christmas Tree - moss and mineral deposits forming a tree-like shape on the rock wall - is the trip's signature stop.

A switchback road climbs through this dramatic red-rock gorge in the High Atlas foothills, past strange wind-eroded rock formations locals call the Monkey Fingers.

Kasbahs and Berber villages built from the same red earth blend almost seamlessly into the canyon walls around them.

The valley floor, planted with almond and fig trees, adds a green ribbon through the otherwise stark rust-coloured landscape.

Mexico's Copper Canyon is actually a network of canyons in the Sierra Madre Occidental, several deeper than the Grand Canyon, cut by rivers through pine forest and red rock.

The main way to see it is the Chepe train, which crosses 37 bridges and passes through 86 tunnels on its way between the desert lowlands and the pine-covered rim.

Small Rarámuri (Tarahumara) communities still live within the canyon system.

A dramatic canyon in Vatnajökull National Park, carved by catastrophic glacial floods, home to the thunderous Dettifoss waterfall and the horseshoe-shaped Ásbyrgi depression.

Dark basalt cliffs and moss-covered riverbanks make it one of Iceland's starkest, most powerful landscapes.

Ranked among the world's deepest gorges, this Himalayan valley squeezes between two 8,000-metre peaks, Annapurna and Dhaulagiri, with a river running far below.

Ancient salt-trading routes and Tibetan Buddhist villages still line the gorge's upper reaches, largely unchanged for centuries.

Fossilised ammonites called shaligrams, sacred in Hinduism, are still found in the riverbed here.

England's largest gorge cuts through the Mendip Hills with limestone cliffs rising 137 metres above the road, a scale that surprises most visitors to this part of the country.

Britain's oldest complete human skeleton, Cheddar Man, was found in the show caves beneath the cliffs and dates back over 10,000 years.

A clifftop walking trail loops the gorge's rim for views down over the valley and out toward the Somerset Levels.

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.

Boats gliding along this river between Lake Izabal and the Caribbean pass through a dramatic limestone gorge draped in jungle, hot sulfur springs bubbling right at the waterline, and Castillo de San Felipe, a Spanish colonial fort built to guard against pirates raiding the river route inland.

The mix of jungle scenery, warm-water swimming and colonial history along one boat journey gives it a quieter character than Guatemala's more famous ruins.