Prehistoric

Buġibba Temple

St. Paul's Bay, Malta

Buġibba Temple is Malta's most improbable sacred site: a Tarxien-phase megalithic temple from c....

Burraland Broch

Trondra, Scotland, United Kingdom

On the eastern coast of Mainland Shetland, the ruins of Burraland Broch stand on a promontory above Mousa Sound....

Burroughston Broch

Shapinsay, Scotland, United Kingdom

At the northeastern corner of Shapinsay, far from the island's small settlement, Burroughston Broch stands on a hillock above the sea....

Cadair Idris

Dolgellau, Wales, United Kingdom

Rising above southern Snowdonia, Cadair Idris has drawn seekers for centuries with its promise of transformation....

Cairn de Gavrinis

Kerners, Morbihan, France

On an island in the Gulf of Morbihan, Neolithic builders created something unprecedented: a passage tomb whose every stone is carved with spirals, concentric circles, and...

Cairn of Get

Ulbster, Scotland, United Kingdom

On a windswept hillside in Scotland's far north, a stone chamber has held its silence for over five thousand years....

Cairnpapple Hill

Bathgate, Scotland, United Kingdom

Cairnpapple Hill is a nationally or regionally important prehistoric place in Scotland....

Çakmaktepe

Şanlıurfa, Turkey

Çakmaktepe is the oldest known settlement in the Taş Tepeler cluster of Şanlıurfa — predating even Göbekli Tepe by roughly a thousand years....

Camster Cairns

Lybster, Scotland, United Kingdom

On the windswept peatlands of Caithness, two stone cairns rise from the heather as they have for over five thousand years....

Camster Cairns - The Long Cairn

Part of Camster Cairns

Lybster, Scotland, United Kingdom

Camster Long rises from the open peatland of Caithness like a stone vessel set down on the moor and forgotten by all but the wind....

Camster Cairns - The Round Cairn

Part of Camster Cairns

Lybster, Scotland, United Kingdom

On the peatlands of Caithness, a circular mound of grey stone rises from the heather....

Cancho Roano

Zalamea de la Serena, Badajoz, Spain

Cancho Roano stands in the Extremaduran plain as the best-preserved building of Tartessian civilization, an Iron Age Iberian culture shaped by strong Phoenician influence....

Capula

Corse-du-Sud, France

Capula is the atmospheric climax of the Cucuruzzu circuit in southern Corsica — a site where Bronze Age Torrean foundations underlie a 9th-century medieval castrum, and...

Carn Liath Broch

Golspie, Scotland, United Kingdom

Where the A9 hugs the coast between Golspie and Brora, a circular stone tower rises from a low headland overlooking the North Sea....

Carrol Broch

Brora, Scotland, United Kingdom

Above Loch Brora in Sutherland, where the strath opens between hills of heather and birch, the ruins of Carrol Broch stand on a raised clearing surrounded by forest....

Carrowkeel

County Sligo, Sligo, Ireland

On the Bricklieve Mountains in County Sligo, fourteen cairns built over five thousand years ago crown the ridgeline like stone sentinels....

Carrowmore

County Sligo, Sligo, Ireland

On the Coolera Peninsula near Sligo, thirty surviving megalithic monuments mark what was once a cemetery of sixty structures, among the oldest in Ireland....

Carwynnen Quoit

Camborne, England, United Kingdom

Near Camborne in Cornwall, a ten-ton capstone once again rests on its supporting pillars, restored in 2014 after lying collapsed for nearly five decades....

Casteddu di Tappa

Corse-du-Sud, France

Casteddu di Tappa is one of southern Corsica's most complete Torrean Bronze Age complexes — a cyclopean-walled village crowned by a circular ceremonial torre that...

Castlerigg stone ring

Keswick, England, United Kingdom

On a plateau near Keswick in the Lake District, forty stones form one of Britain's earliest and most atmospheric prehistoric monuments....

Castro de Baroña

Porto do Son, A Coruña, Spain

Castro de Baroña is a fortified Iron Age settlement occupied roughly from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD, its circular stone house foundations perched on a...

Castro of Zambujal

Torres Vedras, Lisbon, Portugal

Above the Sizandro River near Torres Vedras, Castro do Zambujal preserves one of the most complex fortified settlements of Copper Age Iberia....

Çatalhöyük

Konya, Turkey

Çatalhöyük is one of the world's most intensively studied Neolithic settlements — 18 levels of occupation, tightly packed mud-brick houses with roof-entry and the dead...

Cave of La Pileta

Benaoján, Málaga, Spain

Discovered by a farmer searching for bat guano in 1905, Cueva de la Pileta in Málaga province holds hundreds of paintings and engravings made across an extraordinary span...

Cave of La Vieja, Alpera

Alpera, Albacete, Spain

Cueva de la Vieja is a UNESCO World Heritage rock art shelter on the slopes of Cerro del Bosque in Albacete, Spain, preserving more than a hundred painted figures spanning...

Cave of Los Letreros

Vélez-Blanco, Almería, Spain

High on a cliff above Vélez-Blanco, Cueva de los Letreros holds around 174 red-ochre figures painted by Neolithic and Chalcolithic communities — among them the Indalo, a...

Çayönü Tepesi

Diyarbakır, Turkey

Çayönü Tepesi, near the headwaters of the Tigris River, is among the most ritually complex Neolithic sites in the world....

Ceccia

Corse-du-Sud, France

Casteddu di Ceccia is a Torrean Bronze Age torra monument dating to approximately 1350 BCE, preserved on a rocky outcrop in the village of Ceccia south of Porto-Vecchio....

Cheonjeon-ri Petroglyphs

Ulsan, Ulsan, South Korea

Cheonjeon-ri is the northern rock panel of UNESCO’s two-component Petroglyphs along the Bangucheon Stream property. Ulsan documents a main face about 9.8 metres wide and 2....

Chun Quoit

Bojewyan, England, United Kingdom

Rising from the West Penwith moorland, Chun Quoit is Cornwall's best-preserved Neolithic chambered tomb....

Citânia de Briteiros

Guimarães, Braga, Portugal

On a hilltop above the Ave River valley, Citânia de Briteiros preserves one of the largest and most thoroughly excavated Iron Age hillforts in northwestern Iberia — a...

Citânia de Sanfins

Paços de Ferreira, Porto, Portugal

Citânia de Sanfins is a large, fortified Iron Age hillfort of the Gallaeci people, occupied from around the 5th century BCE into the Roman period....

City on the Magdalensberg

Magdalensberg, Carinthia, Austria

Rising above the Zollfeld plain in southern Carinthia, the Magdalensberg holds the remains of what was likely the royal capital of the Celtic Kingdom of Noricum and,...

Clava Cairns

Inverness, Scotland, United Kingdom

Set in a woodland clearing near Inverness, the Clava Cairns stand as monuments to Bronze Age beliefs about death and rebirth....

Clynnog Fawr Dolmen

Clynnog Fawr, Wales, United Kingdom

On a hillside between mountains and sea near Clynnog Fawr, a Neolithic burial chamber has stood for over five thousand years....

Coddu Vecchiu Grave

Alzachèna/Arzachena, Sassari, Italy

In the Sardinian countryside near Arzachena, a granite stele rises four meters into the sky. Carved into its face is a doorway—not for the living, but for the dead....

Complesso Nuragico di Malchittu

Alzachèna/Arzachena, Sassari, Italy

A 1.5-kilometer path climbs through granite landscape to a temple older than the Parthenon by a millennium....

Complesso Nuragico Romanzesu

Bitzi/Bitti, Nuoro, Italy

In a forest near the source of the river Tirso, a seven-hectare sanctuary complex speaks of Bronze Age pilgrimage on a grand scale....

Complesso Prenuragico di Monte Baranta

Alghero, Sassari, Italy

On a hilltop three kilometers from Olmedo, a Copper Age complex challenges assumptions about prehistoric purpose....

Corrimony Cairn

Drumnadrochit, Scotland, United Kingdom

Hidden in a quiet Highland glen, Corrimony Chambered Cairn has kept watch over its buried dead for four thousand years....

Cova dels Cavalls, Valltorta

Tírig, Castellón, Spain

Cova dels Cavalls holds one of the finest surviving examples of Spanish Levantine rock art: a hunting scene in which nine deer are driven by beaters toward four archers,...

Covalanas Cave

Ramales de la Victoria, Cantabria, Spain

Covalanas Cave holds one of Cantabria's clearest surviving galleries of Paleolithic art: red ochre hinds built from dabbed fingertip dots rather than continuous lines,...

Croft Moraig Stone Circle, Aberfeldy

Aberfeldy, Scotland, United Kingdom

On the shores of Loch Tay, three concentric rings of stone mark a place held sacred for five millennia....

Cucuruzzu

Corse-du-Sud, France

Cucuruzzu is the finest surviving example of a Torrean casteddu — a Bronze Age fortified hilltop settlement built in Corsica's Alta Rocca plateau between 1800 and 800 BCE....

Cuween Hill Chambered Cairn

Kirkwall, Scotland, United Kingdom

On Cuween Hill, a few miles west of Kirkwall on Mainland Orkney, a low passage leads into the earth and opens into a chambered tomb five thousand years old....

Devil’s Quoits

West Oxfordshire, England, United Kingdom

In the gravel lands of the Thames Valley, a stone circle has risen again. The Devil's Quoits at Stanton Harcourt was built between 2900 and 2600 BC, a henge and stone...

Dolmen Ciuledda

Luras, Sassari, Italy

In a valley northeast of Luras, a small megalithic structure has kept its chamber dry for nearly five millennia....

Dolmen de la Madeleine

Gennes, Maine-et-Loire, France

On the outskirts of Gennes, near the Loire, stands one of the larger dolmens in a region second only to Brittany for megalithic density....