Germany observation tower
Bürgerturm (Gotha)
You can see 94 km from here, looking north.
Calculating the panorama…
Drag to turn around. The relief is drawn 2.2 times taller so the ridges can be read; far ridges are paler, as in the real air.
The view
Up to 94 km away.
Calculated on the relief one degree at a time, up to 250 km, with the curvature of the Earth and the refraction of the air: what stands above the horizon from here.
Our own rating, from the relief and the climate only: open horizon (35 points), how far you see (25), sea and named peaks in view (20) and clear months (20).
- 94 kmFarthest ridgelooking north
- 100%Open horizonof the circle where the horizon is below your eyes
- 248Peaks in viewnamed summits that rise above the relief in front
- 405 mAltitudeabove the sea, at the highest point of the viewpoint
The 248 peaks you can name from here
From west to east as you turn around: height, distance and direction. Each one links to its guide on Peakyas, our mountain atlas.
From the relief only: buildings, trees and haze are not in the model. On a hazy day you see much less; 250 km is the limit of our calculation.
The sun
The best sunsets are in April and in September.
When the sun really disappears from this viewpoint — behind the relief or into the sea — and in which direction, on the 15th of each month, in local time.
- Jansouth-west12 min before the sea-level sunset20%
- Febwest8 min before the sea-level sunset23%
- Marwest6 min before the sea-level sunset28%
- Aprwest6 min before the sea-level sunset37%
- Maynorth-west12 min before the sea-level sunset31%
- Junnorth-west12 min before the sea-level sunset30%
- Julnorth-west14 min before the sea-level sunset32%
- Augnorth-west6 min before the sea-level sunset32%
- Sepwest6 min before the sea-level sunset35%
- Octwest8 min before the sea-level sunset29%
- Novsouth-west12 min before the sea-level sunset22%
- Decsouth-west18 min before the sea-level sunset20%
- Time: when the sun goes behind the horizon you see from here.
- Minutes: how much earlier the relief hides the sun.
- %: share of clear sky that month (NASA, 2001–2020).
The highlighted months are the clearest. Golden hour starts about an hour before.
The place
Bürgerturm (Gotha).
Observation tower near Gotha
Bürgerturm (Gotha) is an observation tower in Germany, 405 m above the sea.
On a clear day the farthest ridge you can see is 94 km away, looking north.
248 named peaks rise above the relief in front; the most prominent is Brocken (1,141 m), 93 km away.
The horizon is open, below your eyes, over 100% of the circle.
The skies are clearest in April and in September.

Get there and stay
- Going upHours in OpenStreetMap: 24/7 · free entry
- Wohnmobilstellplatz Brückenstraße Gothacampsite · 3.4 km · 6 within 10 km
- Pension Veraplace to stay · 1.4 km · 38 within 10 km
- Gothanearest town · 2.8 km in a straight linePlaces to stay in GothaBooking.com · sponsored link↗
- Erfurt-Weimar Airport (ERF)nearest airport with scheduled flights · 21 km in a straight lineCar hire at LEJ airport (Schkeuditz)Discover Cars · sponsored link↗
Plan the visit
A guided tour, a bed nearby, a car.
Some links above are affiliate links: if you book through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes what the data on this page says.
From above
The viewpoint and its surroundings.
The satellite image of the 6 × 6 km around the viewpoint, with what OpenStreetMap shows nearby.

Around, in OpenStreetMap
- 6other viewpoints within 5 kmGothablick, Rathausturm and 4 more
- 9named peaks within 5 kmGrenzberg, Pfaffenberg, Alsberg and 6 more
- 3marked trails within 3 kmJakobsweg Via Regia 6, Lutherweg Thüringen - Westschlaufe, Via Romea - Deutschland - Thüringen
- 19shelters and huts within 5 km
- 151car parks within 3 km
- 1visitor centres within 5 kmTouristinformation Gotha
- 37restaurants and cafés within 3 km
- 6campsites within 10 kmWohnmobilstellplatz Brückenstraße Gotha, Übernachtungsplatz Busparkplatz Gotha, Gasthof Thüringer Waldblick Wohnmobilstellplatz and 3 more
- 38places to stay within 10 kmPension Vera, Ferienwohnung Schuster, Hotel Schützenberg and 35 more
- cable car and funicular stations within 5 km
Counted in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit. A low number may just mean nobody has mapped it yet.
In our other atlases
What you see from Bürgerturm (Gotha), and what is near.
Everything around this viewpoint — mountains, water, forests, birds, caves and the night sky — in the family's atlases.
Figures from the sister sites' databases (Wikidata, HydroATLAS, GeoNames, OpenStreetMap, GBIF). Links open when each site is online.
Photographs
The view, as people saw it.
Where these figures come from
| Name and type | Wikidata (Q1021503) · CC0 |
|---|---|
| Sun | J. Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms |
| Peaks in view | Peakyas (Wikidata, CC0) |
| Panorama and altitude | Copernicus DEM GLO-90 / GLO-30 · © DLR e.V., © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH, Copernicus/ESA |
| Clouds | NASA POWER (CERES SYN1deg, 2001–2020; MERRA-2) |
| What is around | © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL |
| Images | EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons |
| Sister atlases | Peakyas, Lakeyas, Forestyas, Birdyas, Darkskyas, Cavernyas |
Every figure is an average, an estimate or a count from a public dataset. Licences and methods: data sources.
The family
Do you prefer beaches, lakes, mountains, waterfalls, islands, rivers, canyons, caves, dark skies, viewpoints, birdwatching or forests?
Same idea, other landscapes: field atlases built on open data, in seven languages.






