Are you a woman itching for another stamp in your passport? Then you might want to bypass the following destinations, all of which are famous not just for their spectacular scenery or historic import, but also for banning female tourists. From ancient religious beliefs to Nazi-era morality restrictions, here are five places where women are prohibited to visit—and why.
Mount Athos, Greece
For more than 1,000 years, Orthodox Christian pilgrims and monks have flocked to dozens of Eastern Orthodox monasteries on and around Mount Athos, located on a picturesque peninsula in northern Greece known for its spectacular views and caches of rare art. The “Holy Mountain” and more than 100 miles of land around it has been protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site since the 1990s for its “exceptional universal significance.”
But while Mt. Athos may have “universal significance,” it isn’t universally open. Since A.D. 1046, women and female animals alike have been banned from the Athos Peninsula—excluding only female cats.
Not only do the mountain’s monasteries forbid women on the grounds that their presence would make it hard for monks to cling to their vows of celibacy, but Orthodox tradition holds that the Mt. Athos belongs to the Virgin Mary, and that no other woman may visit its hallowed ground.
That hasn’t kept women from trying: Some have attempted to sneak onto the peninsula by donning men’s clothing, and in 2019 a set of female bones was unearthed beneath a Byzantine chapel on the site. But Mt. Athos remains male-only and is protected by special legal status within Greece, which considers it an autonomous region, and a special provision in European law that provides the mountain special status “justified exclusively on grounds of a spiritual and religious nature.”
Mount Ōmine, Japan
Seeking gender equality atop other peaks? You may want to skip Japan’s Mount Ōmine, located on the island of Honshu and known for its sacred significance and cultural heritage.
Also designated a UNESCO World Heritage site, the mountain is significant for its spiritual role. The area’s Shinto and Buddhist temples and shrines have long attracted ascetics, travelers, and even members of the imperial family, and those who walk the rugged, green mountain paths are treated to a uniquely peaceful mountain landscape.
But women have been prohibited from the peak of Ōmine for over 1,000 years—banned both because of the “distraction” they would purportedly present to male pilgrims and prohibitions on the presence of menstruating females at rituals. The ban may be old, but it’s still contested by some—over 10,000 Japanese women petitioned for it to be lifted when the mountain was designated a UNESCO heritage site in 2004.
An aerial view of Okinoshima Island, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Although women are not allowed on the island, it features three shrines dedicated to sea goddesses.
Photograph By Photo by The Asahi Shimbun/ Getty
Men purify themselves with sea water before stepping foot on Okinoshima Island in 2016. Allegedly, the brief trip to the island is considered “too dangerous” for women, who have been banned for their own safety.
Photograph By STR/AFP via Getty Images
Okinoshima Island, Japan
Another sacred heritage site in Japan also bars women: Okinoshima Island, a tiny island off of Fukuoka. The island, manned by a rotating cast of lone Shinto priests, is considered a deity and is recognized by UNESCO as an “exceptional example of the tradition of worship of a sacred island.” Its traditional origins actually center around three sea goddesses memorialized at three shrines on Okinoshima, and for more than a thousand years pilgrims brought sacrifices to the island, including mirrors, coins, and gold rings from the Korean Peninsula that memorialize past interchange between Japan and Korea.
The island is largely off-limits to both genders today, but each year hundreds of men visit the island for a festival. Even then, they’re only allowed to set foot on its shores after bathing in sea water. Why can’t women join along? In 2017, an official explained that the brief trip to the island is considered too dangerous for women and that they’re banned for their own safety.
Herbertstrasse, Hamburg, Germany
Even liberal Europe boasts a no-female-tourist-allowed enclave: Hamburg’s notorious Herbertstrasse, a street verboten to women—those who aren’t sex workers, that is. The street is located near the Reeperbahn, an area of the city that’s considered one of the most famous red-light districts in the world. Technically, Herbertstrasse is a small side street renowned for its neon lights and windows featuring hundreds of scantily-clad (and legal) sex workers. But though it is a public street and thus subject to Germany’s strict gender equality laws, visitors to Herbertstrasse must first pass beyond large metal barriers with signs that explicitly prohibits all female tourists and males under 18 from entering.
And those barriers have a sinister history: Though women have long practiced prostitution in Hamburg and the Herbertstrasse, the notorious street was once open to all. That changed in 1933, when the newly elected Nazis closed off the street with barriers as part of a bid to control sex work and vice in the early days of National Socialism.
Penning in Hamburg’s sex workers was purportedly to prevent them from “infecting” the morals of everyday Germans, but it also served to isolate them from the community and ended up shielding not just their profession, but their persecution. Beginning in 1933, Nazis arrested more than 3,000 women in Hamburg as “asocials” in punishment for prostitution. Many died along with sex workers from other German cities in concentration camps like Ravensbruck and Neuengamme, their stories lost to time. But the gates—and the prohibition against female visitors—remained long after the Nazis were gone; in the 1970s Hamburg actually fortified the gates, erecting even higher steel barriers to block the public area from view. These days, the surrounding streets feature something else: “Stolpersteine”—memorial cobblestones or plaques bearing the names of some of the persecuted sex workers and memorializing their deaths in Nazi camps.
A man rides his donkey past a stunning blue lake in Band-e Amir National Park in Afghanistan. While the park once featured the country’s first female rangers, women visitors have been banned from Band-e Amir since 2023, when the Taliban issued an edict prohibiting female tourists due to “modesty” violations.
Photograph By Alex Treadway, National Geographic Image Collection
Band-e-Amir National Park, Afghanistan
Known as the Afghan version of the Grand Canyon, Band-e-Amir in Bamiyan province is the first park of its kind in Afghanistan, renowned for more than 200 miles of spectacular lakes, soaring cliffs, and natural dams. The national park, first opened in 2009 and nominated for UNESCO recognition, was once praised as a symbol of Afghanistan’s postwar progress and even employed the nation’s first female park rangers. In 2023, however, the Taliban-led Afghan government announced that the national park was off-limits for female visitors, purportedly due to “modesty” violations. Taliban fighters have also been stationed at park entrances to prohibit their entry.
The move is just one of many designed to keep women from public life in Afghanistan. Since re-seizing rule of the country in 2021, the Taliban’s Vice and Virtue Ministry has barred women from most facets of public life, restricting dress and travel and keeping women from traveling long distances using public transportation.
Residents of Band-e-Amir report that tourism has diminished since the ban took effect—a prohibition that keeps female visitors from viewing some of the nation’s most breathtaking scenery. For now, the only women who’ll get to enjoy it are those who already live in the scenic region.
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