Five years ago, a new lookout tower was opened on Velká Deštná in the Orlické Mountains

Prague – A new lookout tower in the shape of an irregular pentagon was opened on Velká Deštná in the Orlické Mountains on October 26, 2019, when the first tourists climbed its 96 steps in nice weather. The eighteen-meter tall tower stands at an altitude of 1115 meters on the highest peak of the Orlické Mountains and cost 4.7 million crowns including VAT. The structure offers distant views into the Czech interior and into Poland.

The lookout tower, designed by the Brno studio architekti.in, has a steel structure and is clad with larch beams. When approaching from a distance, the tower appears as a slender skyscraper. The original construction of the lookout tower received the title of Building of the Year for the Hradec Králové Region in 2020.

The municipality of Deštné in the Orlické Mountains had been striving for a lookout tower on Velká Deštná for several years. Its representatives agreed with the landowner, Count Jan Egon Kolowrat. The land was donated to the municipality and the construction was also approved by the Protected Landscape Area. In the past, there were several simple wooden viewpoints on Velká Deštná resembling hunting hides, but they could not withstand the harsh climatic conditions prevailing at the summit of the mountain. Below it, a new tourist hut with refreshments was opened at the end of 2020.

The lookout tower on Velká Deštná became the first of four planned lookout towers on the ridge route in the Czech-Polish border area in the Hradec Králové Region. It was followed by the lookout tower in Vysoká Srbská, near Olešnice in the Orlické Mountains, and above Nový Hrádek in the Náchod region. Their construction was subsidized by the European Union.