Timewheel, Installation artwork near City Park, Hungary

The Timewheel is a 60-ton hourglass of red granite, stainless steel and bulletproof glass, 8 metres in diameter and 2 metres wide, standing upright on a low concrete base at Ötvenhatosok tere. Its disc is built from reddish-brown stone panels divided by radial and concentric seams, with two glazed wedge-shaped openings framed in pale green and a small metal hub at the centre. Fine glass granules trickle from the upper to the lower chamber.

The unveiling took place on May 1, 2004, marking Hungary joining the European Union. The site was previously occupied by a Lenin monument removed after the fall of communism.

The name links the physical rotation of the object with the cyclical understanding of time in Hungarian culture. Visitors see a contemporary symbol of continuity and renewal at a site that once held a political statue.

The Timewheel stood on Ötvenhatosok tere, behind the Palace of Art and right of Heroes' Square, on the spot once occupied by Pátzay Pál's Lenin statue. It has not operated since 2011, when the owner skipped the New Year turning for cost reasons. In summer 2021 it was dismantled and removed for a planned restoration and re-erection elsewhere.

Finely ground glass particles move through the chambers and take exactly one year to travel from top to bottom. Four technicians rotate the entire construction with steel cables and special mechanisms when the new year begins.