Szablyár Péter: Sky-high - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2007)

Observation Towers

a new lookout tower on Nagy-Kopasz hill. All the familiar peaks of the Pilis can be made out. The sharpest eyed may believe to have spotted the ranges of the Mátra and the Bükk, and those with a vivid imagination even claim to have seen the High Tatras from here. The dilapidated tower was reconstructed by the district municipality at more than ioo million forints in 2005. The tower is accessible from the Chair Lift on a walkway flanked by a jogging track covered with imitation grass.

Due to its easy accessibility, well-kept walkways, cross-country skiers’ tracks, and, of course, its two lookout towers, Hars-Hegy has become a popular tourist destination in the last decade or two.

Rising above the treetops on the highest point of Hárs Hegy at an altitude of 454 metres, stands the Károly Kaán Observation Tower. Tourists roaming its neighbourhood like to climb the wooden construction, which affords an ever larger view as one ascends one platform after the other. In clear weather one can look all the way to the ranges of the Börzsöny and the Mátra. There stood another tower in the same spot here but it collapsed with all the wear and tear it had sustained.

■ The Cli&abeth Lookout Tower

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