The 16 Most Extraordinary Rock Formations in The World

Cappadocia in central Turkey is a landscape of extraordinary volcanic rock formations called fairy chimneys — tall, thin spires of soft volcanic tuff capped with harder basalt.

Thousands of years of habitation have added cave churches with Byzantine frescoes, underground cities, and rock-cut monasteries to an already extraordinary natural canvas.

Uluru is a 348-metre monolith of rust-red sandstone rising sheer out of the Central Australian desert, sacred to the Anangu people.

It performs twice daily, smouldering orange at dawn and deepening to violet after sunset, and the colour show alone justifies the pilgrimage.

Up close, the base walk reveals waterholes, rock art and lush pockets of desert life.

The Twelve Apostles are a collection of limestone stacks rising up to 45 metres from the Southern Ocean off the Port Campbell National Park on the Great Ocean Road.

Carved from the cliffs by erosion over millennia, they are most spectacular at sunrise and sunset when the low light turns the limestone golden.

The Wave is a sandstone rock formation in the Coyote Buttes area of the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness in Arizona, famous for its colourful, undulating forms created by 190-million-year-old Jurassic sand dunes.

The swirling bands of red, orange, and pink sandstone make it one of the world's most extraordinary geological formations.

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.

The Giant's Causeway is an area of approximately 40,000 interlocking basalt columns on the Antrim coast of Northern Ireland, formed by an ancient volcanic fissure eruption.

The hexagonal columns, which fit together with extraordinary geometric precision, were created around 50-60 million years ago and have inspired countless legends.

Limestone karst towers rise straight out of flooded rice paddies along the Ngo Dong River, toured by small rowboats often paddled with the feet.

Rowers guide boats through low limestone caves where the ceiling nearly touches the water, then back out into open paddy fields ringed by peaks.

It's frequently billed as Halong Bay on land and delivers a similarly dramatic skyline at a fraction of the cost.

Mineral bands of red, gold, turquoise and lavender stripe this Andean ridge, exposed by erosion after centuries of livestock trampling stripped the surface soil.

Sitting above 5,000 metres, the colours are more vivid in person than in most photos, especially just after rain.

Its rapid rise from local secret to must-see spot in under a decade has brought heavy foot traffic to a genuinely fragile landscape.

Striped mountains in shades of red, yellow, and blue layer across the landscape like abstract art, the result of mineral-rich sandstone deposited and folded over 24 million years.

Raised boardwalks at four numbered viewing platforms let visitors take in the full rainbow effect.

Hierve el Agua is a set of mineral-rich springs in the hills outside Oaxaca that have calcified over thousands of years into cliffside formations resembling frozen waterfalls.

Two natural infinity pools sit right at the cliff edge, letting swimmers look out over the valley below.

The site is far quieter than Mexico's beach and pyramid destinations, reachable only by a bumpy mountain road.

A bald granite inselberg rises abruptly out of flat Namibian desert, earning it the nickname the Matterhorn of Africa.

Natural rock arches, San rock paintings and easy scrambling routes over the surrounding boulders fill a day, and with almost no light pollution for hundreds of kilometres the night sky is extraordinary.

Facilities amount to a basic community-run campsite and little else.

Wind and ancient salt deposits have carved this stretch of the Atacama Desert into ridges, dunes and a natural amphitheatre that genuinely resembles a lunar landscape, 13km from San Pedro de Atacama inside the Los Flamencos National Reserve.

At sunset the salt-crusted rock turns deep red and violet, drawing every tour van in town to the same handful of viewpoints.

By day it's simply one of the driest, starkest places on Earth.

Jabal AlFil, or Elephant Rock, is a sandstone formation carved by wind erosion into the unmistakable shape of an elephant with its trunk lowered to the desert floor.

It's one of the most recognisable landmarks of the AlUla region, set in an open desert valley that turns gold and red as the sun drops, with a small amphitheatre of seating built facing the rock for evening visitors.

Hexagonal basalt columns, formed the same way as the Giant's Causeway, arch into a natural sea cave on the uninhabited island of Staffa.

The cathedral-like interior, with waves echoing off the columned walls, inspired Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture.

Reaching it requires a boat crossing through open water, which keeps the cave far quieter than its Northern Irish cousin.

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.