Spitzkoppe, Granite mountain peak in Namib Desert, Namibia.

Spitzkoppe is a group of bald granite inselbergs between Usakos and Swakopmund in the Namib Desert. The highest outcrop reaches 1,728 m above sea level, about 670 m above the desert floor, and the Little Spitzkoppe nearby stands at 1,557 m. The granite is more than 120 million years old, and other prominences extend into the Pontok Mountains.

The granite of the Spitzkoppe is more than 120 million years old; it is an intrusion that never reached the surface, and the surrounding rock weathered away, leaving the resistant granite standing as an inselberg. In 1896 the German Colonial Society built a trading post named Spitzkopje below the mountain, centre of a 120,000-hectare farm with a five-room farmhouse, stables and storerooms. In 1964 the farm was expropriated under the Odendaal Plan, and in 1970 Damara families were moved here, forming a village with a church and school.

The best-known painted site, Bushman Paradise, is reached through a chained gate and has lost most of its 2,000- to 4,000-year-old paintings to vandalism. Better-preserved drawings can still be seen around the foot of the Great Spitzkoppe, notably at Rhino Rock, whose images suggest rhinos once lived here. Most rock art is shown only on guided visits led by residents of the local communal village.

The Spitzkoppe lies about 120 km east of Swakopmund, between Usakos and Swakopmund, reached by gravel roads; the municipal campsite sits at the foot of the peaks. The easiest climbing route is graded V+ on the UIAA scale, and the summit was first reached in 1946. Rock paintings such as Bushman Paradise and Rhino Rock are mostly visited only with guides from the local community.

Photographs of the Spitzkoppe were used as backgrounds for the "Dawn of Man" sequences in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, not filmed on location. The peaks also appear in the 2001 film The Cave and in the 2010 film The Prisoner.