Pitons, cirques and remparts of Reunion Island

Two great volcanoes, sheer walls and three vast collapsed craters called cirques give Réunion one of the most dramatic landscapes in the Indian Ocean. The World Heritage core covers over 100,000 hectares — some 40 percent of the island — a tangle of gorges, escarpments and forested basins that shelters a wealth of plants found nowhere else, from rainforest to cloud forest and upland heath. UNESCO inscribed the Pitons, cirques and remparts of Réunion as a natural World Heritage Site in 2010.