https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/ New uncrowded places added to the atlas. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/piodao-portugal https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/piodao-portugal A schist village stacked like an amphitheatre into the Serra do Açor, where slate-black houses with blue-painted doors face a single white church. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/moulay-idriss-zerhoun-morocco https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/moulay-idriss-zerhoun-morocco A white hill-town wrapped around two hills above the Roman ruins of Volubilis, holy to Moroccans and almost unvisited by everyone else. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/sighnaghi-georgia https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/sighnaghi-georgia An 18th-century walled town on a ridge above the Alazani valley, with the Caucasus as a backdrop and Kakheti's wine villages below. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/permet-albania https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/permet-albania A slow town on the Vjosa, Europe's last big wild river, with a limestone outcrop in the middle of town and Ottoman bath springs 15 minutes away. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/alquezar-spain https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/alquezar-spain A medieval village on a limestone spur above the Vero canyon, with walkways bolted to the gorge walls and Palaeolithic rock art in the caves. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/kuldiga-latvia https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/kuldiga-latvia A wooden-and-brick 17th-century town in western Latvia with the widest waterfall in Europe running right through it, listed by UNESCO in 2023 and still overlooked. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/chiang-khan-thailand https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/chiang-khan-thailand A single street of teak shophouses along the Mekong opposite Laos, where morning alms rounds and river mist are the events of the day. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/barichara-colombia https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/barichara-colombia An 18th-century sandstone town on a plateau above the Suárez canyon, so unchanged it is used as a set whenever Colombian cinema needs the past. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/lamu-kenya https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/lamu-kenya The oldest Swahili town on the East African coast, a maze of coral-stone houses and carved doors reached only by boat, with donkeys for traffic. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/harar-ethiopia https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/harar-ethiopia A 16th-century walled city of 82 mosques and 360 lanes, where hyenas are hand-fed at the gates every night and the coffee is among the best on Earth. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/ilha-de-mocambique https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/ilha-de-mocambique A 3 km coral island that was the capital of Portuguese East Africa for four centuries, its stone town of crumbling mansions and a 16th-century fort now home to fishermen. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/nong-khiaw-laos https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/nong-khiaw-laos A village on the Nam Ou river hemmed in by limestone karst towers, where the view from the Pha Daeng peak trail takes in the whole valley. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/kampot-cambodia https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/kampot-cambodia A French colonial river town under the Elephant Mountains, famous for pepper, salt pans and a slow riverfront that Cambodia's beach crowds pass by. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/tupiza-bolivia https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/tupiza-bolivia A small town in a valley of red rock spires and canyons in southern Bolivia, where Butch Cassidy's last robbery took place and horses are still the way to see the country. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/real-de-catorce-mexico https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/real-de-catorce-mexico A silver town at 2,750 m reached through a single-lane tunnel, half ruined since the 1900s and now home to a few hundred people, Huichol pilgrims and a lot of silence. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/tsumago-japan https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/tsumago-japan An Edo-period post town on the Nakasendō highway, preserved in 1968 by residents who agreed never to sell, rent or demolish, and best seen on the 8 km trail from Magome. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/kirkjubour-faroe https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/kirkjubour-faroe A hamlet of turf-roofed farmhouses on the Faroes' southern shore, once the islands' medieval capital, with a roofless 13th-century cathedral and a farm inhabited by the same family since 1550. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/symphony-of-the-stones-garni https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/symphony-of-the-stones-garni A cliff of hexagonal basalt columns hanging over the Azat River, curved like organ pipes, a short scramble below one of Armenia's most visited temples. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/torcal-de-antequera-spain https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/torcal-de-antequera-spain A limestone plateau eroded into a stone city of stacked discs and mushroom pillars, an hour from the Costa del Sol and seen by almost none of its visitors. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/bimmah-sinkhole-oman https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/bimmah-sinkhole-oman A limestone sinkhole 600 m from the sea, filled with turquoise water where fresh and salt water meet, with steps down from a free municipal park. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/hljodaklettar-iceland https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/hljodaklettar-iceland Twisted columnar basalt formations, the roots of old volcanic craters, scattered along the Jökulsá canyon, where the wind and river echo off the rock. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/cono-de-arita-argentina https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/cono-de-arita-argentina A near-perfect natural cone rising 120 m from the white floor of the Arizaro salt flat in the high Puna, so symmetrical it looks built. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/bisti-badlands-usa https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/bisti-badlands-usa A badlands of hoodoos, petrified logs and mushroom-capped rock in shale the colour of ash, with no trails and no signs. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/karlu-karlu-australia https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/karlu-karlu-australia Hundreds of rounded granite boulders, some balanced improbably on others, scattered across a shallow valley in the middle of the Northern Territory. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/wave-rock-australia https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/wave-rock-australia A 15 m granite wave frozen mid-break in the Western Australian wheatbelt, streaked in rust and grey, on the flank of a rock older than most continents. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/panska-skala-czechia https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/panska-skala-czechia A basalt "organ" of up to 12 m columns exposed by an old quarry in northern Bohemia, the oldest protected geological site in the country. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/vale-da-lua-brazil https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/vale-da-lua-brazil A stretch of the São Miguel river where grey quartzite has been polished into craters, pools and lunar curves. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/charyn-canyon-kazakhstan https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/charyn-canyon-kazakhstan A 90 km canyon in the steppe east of Almaty, whose Valley of Castles is a corridor of red sandstone towers eroded into turrets and arches. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/sof-omar-caves-ethiopia https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/sof-omar-caves-ethiopia One of the longest cave systems in Africa, where the Weyb river disappears into limestone and emerges 1.5 km later through a hall of columns, and a Muslim pilgrimage site for centuries. https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/lake-assal-djibouti https://hidden-earth-atlas.pages.dev/gems/lake-assal-djibouti The lowest point in Africa, a lake ten times saltier than the sea, ringed by a blinding crust of salt and black lava at the bottom of the Afar rift.