The 22 Greatest Volcanoes to Visit in the World

Earth’s furnace made visible: cones, calderas, crater lakes, and fields of fresh lava. These are the volcanoes of the atlas. Because volcanic access changes with alert levels, each entry points you to the official monitoring authority rather than a frozen snapshot.

Cotopaxi

Cotopaxi Province, Ecuador

A near-perfect glacier-capped cone rising almost 5,900 metres from the Andean highlands — one of the world's highest active volcanoes, and among the most symmetrical anywhere.

Volcano Latin America

Jeju Island

Jeju Province, South Korea

A volcanic island crowned by South Korea's highest peak, riddled with the world's finest lava-tube caves and edged by a sunrise crater rising straight from the sea.

Volcano East Asia

Kamchatka Volcanoes

Kamchatka Peninsula, Russian Far East

A remote peninsula bristling with snow-capped volcanoes, geysers, and hot springs — one of the most volcanically active places on Earth, roamed by some of the world's largest brown bears.

Volcano East Asia

Kīlauea

Island of Hawaiʻi, United States

One of the most active volcanoes on Earth — a shield volcano on Hawaiʻi whose lava has repeatedly reshaped the island, sometimes glowing in a lava lake and, at times, spilling in rivers of fire to the sea.

Volcano North America

Mayon Volcano

Albay, Bicol Region, Philippines

The Philippines' most active volcano and, by many accounts, the most perfectly symmetrical cone on Earth — a 2,463-metre stratovolcano that dominates the Bicol skyline and, as of mid-2026, is in active eruption.

Volcano Southeast Asia

Mount Bromo

East Java, Indonesia

A smoking volcanic cone rising from a vast 'Sea of Sand' inside an ancient caldera — one of Earth's most dramatic sunrise views, ringed by the peaks of the Tengger massif in East Java.

Volcano Southeast Asia

Mount Fuji

Honshū, Japan

Japan's highest and most revered peak — an almost perfectly symmetrical, snow-capped volcano rising to 3,776 metres, an enduring emblem of the country and a place of pilgrimage for centuries.

Volcano East Asia

Mount Yasur

Tanna Island, Vanuatu

One of the world's most accessible active volcanoes — a crater that has erupted almost continuously for centuries, flinging glowing lava bombs into the night sky just metres from its rim.

Volcano Oceania

Nyiragongo

Virunga, eastern DR Congo

A volcano cradling one of the world's largest and most active lava lakes — a churning pool of molten rock that glows red against the night sky over the Virunga mountains.

Volcano Africa

Arenal Volcano

Alajuela, northern Costa Rica

A near-perfectly conical volcano rising above the rainforests of northern Costa Rica — for decades one of the world's most active, now resting, surrounded by hot springs, waterfalls, and abundant wildlife.

Volcano North America

Bulusan Volcano & Lake

Sorsogon, Bicol, Philippines

An active, rainforest-cloaked stratovolcano at the southern tip of Luzon, cradling a still crater-foot lake — the green, misty heart of Bulusan Volcano Natural Park.

Volcano Southeast Asia

Danakil Depression

Afar Region, northeastern Ethiopia

One of the hottest, lowest, and most alien places on Earth — a searing volcanic desert of neon-yellow sulphur springs, salt flats, and a permanent lava lake, where three tectonic plates are tearing the land apart.

Volcano Africa

Mount Elbrus

Kabardino-Balkaria, Caucasus, Russia

The highest peak in Europe — a twin-coned dormant volcano wrapped in 22 glaciers, rising 5,642 metres above the Caucasus range.

Volcano Europe

Mount Etna

Sicily, Southern Italy

Europe's largest and most active volcano — a snow-capped, constantly rumbling giant looming over eastern Sicily, whose frequent eruptions have built astonishingly fertile slopes of vineyards and orchards.

Volcano Europe

Mount Kanlaon

Negros Island, Central Visayas / Negros Island Region

The highest peak in the central Philippines and one of the country's most active volcanoes — a forested stratovolcano crowning Negros, ringed by a national park rich in endemic wildlife.

Volcano Southeast Asia

Mount Pinatubo Crater Lake

Zambales / Tarlac / Pampanga, Luzon, Philippines

The volcano behind the second-largest eruption of the 20th century now cradles a serene turquoise crater lake — reached by a 4x4 ride across ash-grey lahar canyons and a short hike to the rim.

Volcano Southeast Asia

Mount Teide

Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain

Spain's highest peak and the third-largest volcano on Earth measured from its base — a 3,715-metre cone rising from a vast caldera of frozen lava, often floating above a sea of cloud.

Volcano Europe

Ngorongoro Crater

Ngorongoro Highlands, Northern Tanzania

The world's largest intact volcanic caldera — a 20-kilometre-wide, 600-metre-deep collapsed crater that has become a natural amphitheatre teeming with one of the densest concentrations of large wildlife on Earth.

Volcano Africa

Pacaya

Escuintla, near Antigua, southern Guatemala

One of Central America's most active volcanoes, an accessible cone near Antigua where hikers walk over old lava fields toward the glow of a restless summit.

Volcano Latin America

Santorini Caldera

Cyclades, Aegean Sea, Greece

A flooded volcanic crater ringed by 300-metre cliffs of banded ash and lava — the drowned remains of one of the largest eruptions in human history.

Volcano Europe

Taal Volcano & Lake

Batangas, Calabarzon, Philippines

A volcano within a lake within a volcano — one of the world's smallest and most active volcanoes, sitting on an island inside a crater lake that fills a far larger ancient caldera, just south of Manila.

Volcano Southeast Asia

Tongariro National Park

Central Plateau, North Island, New Zealand

New Zealand's oldest national park — a volcanic heartland of steaming craters, brilliant emerald lakes, and lava fields, crossed by one of the world's finest day hikes, and sacred to the Māori who gifted it for protection.

Volcano Oceania