Germany observation tower
Eckardts-Tower
You can see 80 km from here, looking west.
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 80 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).
- 80 kmFarthest ridgelooking west
- 100%Open horizonof the circle where the horizon is below your eyes
- 217Peaks in viewnamed summits that rise above the relief in front
- 429 mAltitudeabove the sea, at the highest point of the viewpoint
The 217 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 from July to 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-west6 min before the sea-level sunset18%
- Febwest4 min before the sea-level sunset22%
- Marwest6 min before the sea-level sunset27%
- Aprwest4 min before the sea-level sunset35%
- Maynorth-west4 min before the sea-level sunset29%
- Junnorth-west8 min before the sea-level sunset30%
- Julnorth-west6 min before the sea-level sunset33%
- Augwest6 min before the sea-level sunset34%
- Sepwest6 min before the sea-level sunset35%
- Octwest4 min before the sea-level sunset28%
- Novsouth-west6 min before the sea-level sunset20%
- Decsouth-west6 min before the sea-level sunset18%
- 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
Eckardts-Tower.
Cultural heritage monument D-4-63-000-59 (0) in Coburg, Bavaria
Eckardts-Tower is an observation tower in Germany, 429 m above the sea.
On a clear day the farthest ridge you can see is 80 km away, looking west.
217 named peaks rise above the relief in front; the most prominent is Wasserkuppe (950 m), 79 km away.
The horizon is open, below your eyes, over 100% of the circle.
The skies are clearest in April and from July to September.

Get there and stay
- Going upCheck the opening hours before you go: towers and decks close in bad weather.
- Veste Coburgcampsite · 1.2 km · 9 within 10 km
- Vienna House Easy Coburgplace to stay · 1.3 km · 40 within 10 km
- Coburgnearest town · 1.6 km in a straight linePlaces to stay in CoburgBooking.com · sponsored link↗
- Erfurt-Weimar Airport (ERF)nearest airport with scheduled flights · 81 km in a straight lineCar hire at NUE airport (Nuremberg)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
- 16other viewpoints within 5 kmThüringer Blick, Bismarckturm Coburg, Achatfelsen and 13 more
- 27named peaks within 5 kmEckardtsberg, Buchberg, Gruber Stein and 24 more
- 18marked trails within 3 kmJakobsweg Erfurt - Coburg, Amtsbotenweg, Friedrich-Rückert-Wanderweg and 15 more
- 28shelters and huts within 5 km
- 848car parks within 3 km
- 3visitor centres within 5 kmTourist-Information, Service Coburg, DB Reisezentrum
- 105restaurants and cafés within 3 km
- 9campsites within 10 kmVeste Coburg, Anger, Vesteblick and 6 more
- 40places to stay within 10 kmVienna House Easy Coburg, Hotel The Square, Hotel Goldener Anker and 37 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 Eckardts-Tower, 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.
Other viewpoints nearby.
Where these figures come from
| Name and type | Wikidata (Q1281288) · 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, Forestyas, Birdyas, Darkskyas |
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.






