Růžovský vrch, Nature reserve and mountain in the Bohemian Switzerland National Park, Ústí nad Labem Region, Czech Republic.
Růžovský vrch is a 619-meter basalt cone in the Bohemian Switzerland National Park, its summit rising almost 300 meters above the surrounding sandstone plateaus. The upper slopes are covered with blocky basalt debris and a near-primeval mixed forest of beech, sycamore and maple, while sandstone layers hardened by contact with the basalt appear up to about 500 meters.
In 1808 a survey scaffold of the First Military Triangulation was erected on the summit and served as a military watchpost during the Napoleonic wars. Prince Edmund Clary-Aldringen had a 14-metre wooden observation tower built on a 2-metre stone base in May 1881, and a mountain inn in Swiss style followed in 1890. Lightning destroyed the tower in 1891; its 24-metre successor fell in a storm in 1903, and the third tower, opened in 1904, was demolished in 1936.
The mountain's name probably comes from the Celtic word ros, meaning "mighty". Germanic tribes are said to have revered it as Asgard, home of the gods. A local saying warns that when the Rosenberg wears a cap of cloud, rain is certain.
The mountain is reachable from Růžová village via a yellow-marked hiking path that climbs roughly 270 meters of elevation. The walk takes about an hour and passes through forest before reaching the summit viewpoint.
The summit's basalt weathered into block fields, and the rock still shows its columnar form in places. On the slopes grows Alpine currant, its only site in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains. A German saying holds that when the Rosenberg wears a cap of cloud, rain is coming.
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