Thirteen sandstone pillars standing almost free in the Teutoburg Forest, the tallest 37.5 metres. The rock formed about 100 million years ago in the early Cretaceous and was tilted to near vertical around 70 million years ago, and the cracks that opening made are what weather cut into columns. People have used it a long time: Upper Palaeolithic tools here date to roughly 10,700 to 9,600 BC. The largest rock is cut with a three-chambered grotto and passages, an altar consecration inscribed 1115, a medieval relief of the Descent from the Cross, a stone sarcophagus recess and a high chamber with a round window. The popular story that it was a Saxon shrine to the Irminsul has no archaeological support, and there is no evidence of continuous use between the Palaeolithic and the medieval work; that gap is where the Nazi-era enthusiasm for the place got its room. Between half a million and a million visitors a year. Camping, fires and alcohol have been banned since 2010.
Teutoburg Forest, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
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