11 Staircases Worth Climbing

1. Heaven’s Gate Tainmen Mountain, Zhangjiajie City, China. To the Chinese, 999 is a lucky number that symbolizes eternity. At Zhangjiajie, you can climb 999 steps to reach the 400-foot-tall hole in the mountains known as Heaven’s Gate.

2. Baha’i gardens, Haifa, Israel. The Baha’i gardens, aka the “hanging gardens,” span a broad staircase of 19 terraces with around 1,700 stairs that extend up the northern slope of Mount Carmel. The central terrace houses the gold-domed Shrine, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

3. Vatican Museums, Rome. In 1920, at Pope Pius XI’s request, Giuseppe Momoto designed an entrance to the Vatican Museums using a DNA-like bronze spiral staircase with wide steps in two separate helices—one going up and one down.

4. 16th Avenue, San Francisco. This spectacular staircase features 163 mosaic panels, one for each step. The first mosaic panel depicts an ocean and the top-most one shows the sky.

5. Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar. This museum is on a manmade island. Steps cut into the underside of its grand double staircase create the illusion that it is turned upside down.

6. Cedar Creek Treehouse, Mount Rainier, Washington. For eye-candy views of Mount Rainier, climb the 82-foot spiral “Stairway to Heaven,” starting from a fir tree base. When you reach the top, you’ll face another challenge—a rainbow-colored suspension bridge stretched 43 feet through the forest.

7. Château de Blois, France. One of the chateau’s architectural highlights is the spectacular double-helix open staircase tower. The two helices ascend the three floors without ever meeting.

8. Grand Opera Staircase, Paris. The beautiful Italian white marble grand staircase has concave, convex and straight sections. Color prevails along with precious stones placed to catch the eye.

9. Nossa Senhora dos Remédios, Lamego, Portugal. You have to climb 686 granite steps to reach this church, but nine interspersed platforms, fountains and statues ease the ascent.

10. Sigiriya, Sri Lanka. A long stairway leads to the top of this nearly 660-foot-high rock, where a palace for the king (later used as a Buddhist monastery) was built in A.D. 477–95. The UNESCO World Heritage site is Sri Lanka’s most-visited historic destination.

11. Huayna Pichu Inca Stairs, Peru. At Machu Picchu, 600 feet or so of steep, slippery, cloud-covered granite rocks carved into the side of Huayna Picchu (the peak in everyone’s photos that’s 1,180 feet higher than the Lost City) lead to the rarely visited Moon Temple—and a spectacular view of the ruins. The park limits the climb to the first 400 visitors each day.