The world's best viewing platforms Photos

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How well you can appreciate a landscape depends on your point of view. But for anyone with a head for heights, sightseeing is getting easier, says Stephen Wood.

There was a sudden surge of railway-building in Switzerland at the end of the 19th century. New lines climbed out of the valleys in different directions, but many of them had a common objective: a viewpoint. The raison d'être of the Jungfrau railway was the plateau it accessed; day-trippers went to Zermatt purely for a view of the Matterhorn; the prize at the top of the Rochers-de-Naye line was a panorama of Lake Geneva and its surrounding peaks.


The jet age - when entire mountain ranges could be admired from 30,000ft - was not kind to these railways. The Rochers-de-Naye line had to find a new attraction, and created a marmot exhibit up on the mountain. Now people ride the train to get close-ups of a cute rodent.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, however, enjoying the view has made a comeback as a leisure activity. The facilities recently erected in the Alps - with Austria leading the way this time - have a new name: viewing platforms. In the main they serve the traditional function, of providing sedentary adventurers with locations from which to enjoy mountain panoramas. But increasingly there is now added spice for the viewer, even a hint of the 'thrill sport'.

The Grand Canyon Skywalk (pictured), opened in 2007, juts out from the canyonside, and visitors walk around a semicircular glass gangway. The same vertigo-inducing trick - cutting the ground from under visitors' feet - is played at Chicago's Willis Tower, Blackpool's venerable tower (opened, incidentally, in 1894) and on Tianmen Mountain in China. The Chinese walkway is a pedestrian version of the via ferrata, an 'assisted' mountain route with fixed cables; other viewpoints offer experiences akin to aircraft 'wing walking', or hi-tech versions of a canopy walk.

What's going on here? It's virtual danger. Many of these experiences are quite scary; but having been run past Health & Safety, they are not as dangerous as they look. In the extreme version of the SkyWalk you jump off New Zealand's tallest man-made structure. It's quite safe, though. You are attached to a wire.    
Shaped like a hand, the platform looks out over Halstatt Lake, 1,312ft below. It was built in 2006.
Appended in 1985 to the house, a tourist attraction at Dodgeville, this 218ft-long 'infinity room' overlooks Wyoming Valley.
Reached by cable-car, the 410ft walkway on Pulau island has two viewing platforms above a spectaculargorge.
Step out of Auckland's Sky Tower at 629ft in a boiler suit and harness to enjoy the city panorama from a 47-inch ledge.
From the 10,000ft-high platform, at a cable-car's top station, it is possible to see 103 local peaks, and more in Italy.

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