Beautiful, romantic and different every day, there’s nothing quite like experiencing the deep orange and pink hues of a sunrise or sunset, especially on holiday. Recent research has even suggested that sunrises and sunsets can significantly boost feelings of awe which, in turn, has the potential to promote both mental and physical health.
Whether you’re looking for the perfect backdrop for a proposal, are fascinated by astronomy or want to test out your nature photography skills, people worldwide chase the most perfect sunrises and sunsets every day. In fact, videos under the hashtag #Sunset have amassed a striking 61 billion views on TikTok, while videos under #Sunrise have also gained 9.2 billion views.
Sunsail, a leader in yacht charter holidays, has created a sunrise and sunset index to rank the top 15 destinations in the world for experiencing breathtakingly beautiful twilights in 2024. Analysing a combination of social media data (Instagram and TikTok), online search data, Trip Advisor reviews and geological data, Sunsail has ranked destinations based on popularity, light pollution, cloud coverage and air pollution.

Based on these factors, each destination has been given a score out of 24 – the higher the score, the better the sunrises and sunsets are.
In light of the above, Sunsail has found that the world’s best destination for watching sunrises and sunsets is Sicily in Italy, with almost 11,000 posts using the hashtag #SicilySunset on Instagram, average evening cloud coverage of 66% and one Tripadvisor review saying you can experience magical sunsets on “almost every beach in Sicily [although] views are hard to beat around Taormina with [the backdrop of] Mount Etna and the sea”.
Other destinations making the list include Santorini in Greece, over six times more popular on TikTok for the hashtag #SunsetLover than the average popularity worldwide, and Bali in Indonesia which has the most amount of hashtags on Instagram and is home to Seminyak Beach, renowned by travellers as having “breathtaking and surreal views”. While they dominate social media, they don’t quite make the top spot because Sicily has more optimal average cloud coverage which allows for more dramatic sunsets.