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continents → countries → fallsTennessee's beloved swimming-hole waterfall - a broad tiered cascade at the head of a rugged gorge, with a plunge pool that draws crowds all summer.
Blue-green water spilling over red rock deep in a side canyon of the Grand Canyon, on Havasupai land - one of the most beautiful and hardest-won waterfalls in America.
Oregon's tallest and most-visited waterfall - a two-tier, 189-metre plunge in the Columbia River Gorge, with the iconic Benson Bridge arcing across its middle.
The most-visited waterfall on Earth - three falls straddling the US-Canada border, ~22.5 million visitors a year, and the classic boat ride straight into the spray.
Washington's state waterfall - a 60-metre plunge into a stark basalt bowl carved by Ice Age megafloods, ringed by wildflowers in spring.
A 44-metre waterfall hidden 340 metres underground inside Lookout Mountain - America's tallest and deepest publicly accessible cave falls, lit in colour at the tour's climax.
The "Niagara of the West" - at 65 metres, taller than Niagara itself, thundering over a horseshoe rim in the Snake River Canyon of southern Idaho.
An 82-metre plunge in the Cascade foothills - taller than Niagara, framed by the Salish Lodge and made famous by Twin Peaks - with a free, step-free viewpoint.
The 94-metre centrepiece of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone - twice the height of Niagara, plunging past yellow rock walls that gave the park its name.
The tallest waterfall in North America - 739 metres in three tiers off the granite rim of Yosemite Valley, roaring with snowmelt in spring and often bone-dry by late summer.
The tallest waterfall on Earth - 979 metres off the edge of Auyán-tepui, so high the plume atomises to mist before it reaches the jungle below. There are no roads. Reaching it is a genuine expedition, and that is exactly the point.
A 771-metre two-tier giant hidden in the cloud forest of northern Peru - so remote it was barely known to the outside world until 2005.
The largest waterfall system on Earth - some 275 cascades along a jungle gorge on the Argentina-Brazil border, a UNESCO World Heritage Site with walkways right over the roar.
One of the world's most powerful single-drop falls - 226 metres of the Potaro plunging off a sandstone plateau, deep in pristine Guyanese rainforest with no road for hundreds of miles.
A small waterfall of outsized fame - water fanning over a great dome of moss where the Bigăr spring meets the Miniș river, right on the 45th parallel.
A wide amphitheatre of cascades on the Trebižat river - Herzegovina's favourite swimming spot, with turquoise pools ringed by cafés under the falls.
The highest waterfall in Austria - 380 metres in three great tiers through an alpine valley, with a forest trail switchbacking up alongside the spray.
A national park of terraced travertine cascades on the Krka river, crowned by the broad Skradinski Buk - boardwalks, water mills, and a boat to a monastery island.
The tallest man-made waterfall in the world - a 165-metre Roman-engineered cascade near Terni that is switched on to a schedule, thundering to life on cue.
A UNESCO chain of sixteen terraced turquoise lakes spilling into one another over travertine barriers - a boardwalk network threading a forest of waterfalls.
The largest waterfall in Europe by volume - the Rhine crashing 150 metres wide past a castle, with boats that nose right up to the mid-river rock.
The waterfall you can walk behind - a 60-metre ribbon off an old sea cliff with a footpath curling into the cavern behind the curtain.
The showpiece of Krka National Park - a wide, terraced run of seventeen cascades tumbling past old stone water-mills, the most photographed falls in Croatia.
The "Niagara of India" - a broad, thunderous curtain on the edge of the Kerala rainforest, wide enough to feel like a wall of white water in the monsoon.
The fourth-largest border waterfall in the world - a tiered curtain straddling the Vietnam-China frontier, greener and quieter than the giants, with bamboo rafts drifting up to the base.
The "Sea of Milk" - a four-tiered torrent tumbling 310 metres beside a working railway line on the Goa-Karnataka border, foaming white through the Western Ghats.
Seven tiers of emerald pools climbing through a national park, named for the three-headed elephant its top cascade is said to resemble. Swim as you climb.
The largest waterfall in Asia - 77 metres wide and thunderous, with the famous Water-Curtain Cave letting you walk behind the sheet itself.
The most famous of Nikko's waterfalls - a 97-metre plunge from Lake Chūzenji, framed by fiery maples every autumn and fed by the lake's clear water year-round.
A tiered cascade of impossibly turquoise pools stepping down through the jungle outside Luang Prabang - swim between the tiers, then meet the rescued bears next door.
Japan's tallest single-drop waterfall - 133 metres of sacred water framed by the vermilion Seiganto-ji pagoda, a scene woven into a thousand years of pilgrimage.
India's tallest plunge waterfall - 340 metres off a sheer cliff near Cherrapunji, one of the wettest places on Earth, dropping into a startling blue-green pool.
Called "the South's fairest cascade" - a wide, seven-tier terraced falls fanning over mossy steps in the highlands near Da Lat.
Widely called Bali's most beautiful waterfall - a fan of tall cascades in a jungle amphitheatre in the island's north, reached by a steep staircase descent.
The "Little Niagara of Taiwan" - a broad curtain on the Keelung river, paired with the old railway town of Shifen where paper sky-lanterns rise over the tracks.
Bali's most accessible big waterfall - a wide jungle cascade a short hop from Ubud, with swim spots, a jungle swing, and riverside cafés overlooking the falls.
"Tis Issat" - the water that smokes - where the Blue Nile throws itself over a 400-metre-wide basalt lip, once one of Africa's great sights and still stirring after the rains.
The Nile forced through a seven-metre gap and exploding out the far side - the most powerful natural flow on the river, at the heart of Uganda's largest national park.
Morocco's most beautiful falls - 110 metres of red-earth cascades through olive groves, with rainbows in the spray and wild Barbary macaques in the trees.
Three waterfalls stepping down the foothills of Mount Elgon - the tallest a 100-metre ribbon - amid coffee farms and some of Uganda's finest hiking country.
The widest sheet of falling water on Earth - 1,708 metres of the Zambezi thundering into a gorge, throwing spray you can see for miles. "The smoke that thunders."
An 81-metre plunge off the Southern Highlands escarpment into a fern-filled gorge - an easy, wheelchair-friendly lookout barely two hours from Sydney.
One of New Zealand's tallest - 580 metres in three leaps off the Fiordland mountains, reached on foot only by walking the legendary Milford Track.
Australia's tallest single-drop waterfall - 268 metres off a rainforest escarpment in the wet tropics, misting the gorge below.