With an elaborate facade towering more than 150 feet above the desert, Petra's mountaintop "Monastery" was most likely a temple built in the first century B.C.
Photograph by Michael Melford, National Geographic Creative
The World Heritage Site of Lalibela is famed for its striking churches, hewn from the surrounding rock some 800 years ago.
Photograph by George Steinmetz, National Geographic Creative
Stunning rock formations known as "fairy chimneys" are pocked with caves carved in the early centuries of Christianity to serve as monastic cells.
Photograph by Lynn Johnson, National Geographic Creative
The 3,200-year-old colossal Temple of Ramses II was carved from a cliffside by the order of the pharaoh. The seated depictions of Ramses II are nearly 70 feet high.
Photograph by Michael Poliza, National Geographic Creative
Stonemasons took decades to carve the detail-rich Kailasa temple in the 8th century A.D. It is the world's largest structure hewn from a single rock.
Photograph by Bruce Dale, National Geographic Creative
The tombs of Mada'in Saleh were carved into the sandstone mountains of the Arabian desert some 2,000 years ago. They were built by the Nabateans, traders who also created the stunning rock-hewn monuments of Petra in Jordan.
Photograph by John Stanmeyer, National Geographic Creative
Intended as elaborate houses for the afterlife, the tombs of the Myra necropolis were carved by the Lycians, an ancient people influenced by both Greece and the Near East thousands of years ago.
Photograph by Pete Ryan, National Geographic Creative
The monuments of the Pancha Rathas complex in southern India were hewn from single slabs of granite 1,300 years ago. Stone versions of earlier wooden temples, these structures were never consecrated.
Photograph by Kelley Miller, National Geographic Creative