Every day we explore extraordinary places and the remarkable stories behind them.
• Beautiful places.
• Fascinating stories.
Photography is used under licence from talented photographers around the world.
📍 Old Man of Storr, Isle of Skye, Scotland 🇬🇧
These pinnacles belong to a vast landslip. Heavy lava flows rested on weaker Jurassic rocks, and enormous blocks eventually shifted towards the sea.
📷 Clément Proust / Pexels
📍 Malbork Castle, Poland 🇵🇱
Earlier restorers left records detailed enough to help rebuild the castle after the Second World War. Malbork’s history includes the development of modern conservation itself.
📷 Cem Nisan / Pexels
📍 Twelve Apostles, Victoria, Australia 🇦🇺
The sculpting continues below the waves. Beneath these limestone stacks, submerged arches, canyons and reefs preserve other stages of the coast’s long erosion.
📷 Klaus G / Pexels
📍 Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia 🇹🇳
The village grew around the mausoleum of a Sufi saint whose name it still carries. Tunisia’s ruling beys later built holiday homes here, adding another layer to its winding streets.
📷 Memory Lane / Pexels
📍 Lake Atitlán, Guatemala 🇬🇹
The lake fills part of a volcanic caldera, while San Pedro, Tolimán and Atitlán grew after that collapse. Its water is more than 300 metres deep.
📷 HAROLD PRODUCTIONS / Pexels
📍 Göreme, Cappadocia, Türkiye 🇹🇷
The volcanic landscape beneath the balloons also holds homes and churches carved into rock. Göreme’s surviving cave settlements trace human life here back to the fourth century.
📷 MEHMET KAYNAR / Pexels
📍 Horseshoe Bend, Arizona, USA 🇺🇸
The river’s bend came before the deep canyon. As the Colorado Plateau rose, the river cut down through the sandstone, preserving its curve in a gorge around 305 metres deep.
📷 Laszlo Magyar / Pexels
📍 Geirangerfjord, Norway 🇳🇴
This is a drowned glacial valley: ice carved the trough before the sea filled it. The waterfalls descend through a landscape still shaped by erosion and rockfalls.
📷 Nils R / Pexels
📍 Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil 🇧🇷
Ouro Preto’s winding streets follow the hills rather than a grid. The town grew around an eighteenth-century gold rush, leaving churches and fountains long after the mines declined.
📷 Matheus Freitas / Pexels
📍 Mount Bromo, East Java, Indonesia 🇮🇩
During Yadnya Kasada, Tenggerese worshippers carry offerings up to Bromo’s crater. Fruit, vegetables and flowers are cast into the volcano in gratitude for the harvest.
📷 Ilham Zovanka / Pexels
📍 Perast, Montenegro 🇲🇪
Peter the Great sent Russian nobles here to learn navigation from Captain Marko Martinović. This small waterfront town helped train sailors for a much larger empire.
📷 Philipp Aleev / Pexels
📍 Nachi Falls, Wakayama, Japan 🇯🇵
Hiro Shrine has no worship hall. Devotees pray facing the waterfall itself, regarded as the dwelling of a Shinto deity.
📷 KJ Brix / Pexels
📍 Todra Gorge, Morocco 🇲🇦
The shallow river is dwarfed by pink limestone walls that rise around 300 metres. It threads through the same narrow corridor as the road, with tiny vehicles giving the cliffs their scale.
📷 Moussa Idrissi / Pexels
📍 Cape Agulhas, South Africa 🇿🇦
The lighthouse’s limestone came from a quarry beside it. When its walls deteriorated, the light moved to a temporary tower; restoration brought it back here in 1988.
📷 Andrea Gambirasio / Pexels
📍 Shoshone Falls, Idaho, USA 🇺🇸
Long before dams blocked the Snake River, Shoshone Falls set the upstream limit for migrating salmon. This natural barrier rises 212 feet above the river below.
📷 Tom Brashear / Pexels
📍 Kuang Si, Luang Prabang, Laos 🇱🇦
Beside these pools, a sanctuary cares for bears rescued from the wildlife trade. Free the Bears opened its first Lao rescue centre here in 2003.
📷 Jess Chen / Pexels
📍 Rocamadour, France 🇫🇷
Inside Rocamadour’s Notre-Dame chapel hang model ships and prisoners’ chains. They recall the sailors and captives who sought the Black Virgin’s protection.
📷 Mathias Gelineau / Pexels
📍 Lake Kaindy, Kazakhstan 🇰🇿
Those bare trunks belonged to a forest before the lake existed. An earthquake-triggered landslide dammed the gorge in January 1911, leaving the spruce trees standing in rising water.
📷 Arindam Chowdhury / Pexels
📍 Königssee, Bavaria, Germany 🇩🇪
Electric passenger boats have crossed Königssee since 1909. The fleet’s batteries charge overnight, ready for a day beneath these mountain walls.
📷 Levent Simsek / Pexels
📍 Hierve el Agua, Oaxaca, Mexico 🇲🇽
Mineral-rich spring water is still building these stone cascades, leaving fresh layers as it runs over the cliffs. The springs are only about 22–25°C, despite a name meaning ‘the water boils’.
📷 Walter Alejandro / Pexels