minutes to the Panoramic restaurant, located atop the mountain. In 1968–1969, a television tower as well as a restaurant and a cable car were built on Tâmpa's crest. Today, the tower receives a signal from Postăvaru and transmits it to the city below (initially with 10 kW, but today with just 2 kW), while the Panoramic restaurant, situated in a favourable location, offers excellent views of the city from its dining hall. The Aro-Palace society owns the restaurant. The cable car terminus is also located beneath the tower. Before 1989, when tourists exited the cable car, they were met by an enormous stuffed brown bear, standing menacingly on two feet. At the same time as this complex was built, a short distance away, a flagpole was built. In 2004, the Brașov County Council guaranteed festive lighting for it, installing a powerful laser reflector that lights up the sky a good part of every evening. Stories The tunnels and the lake A story has it that there was a tunnel connecting Casa Sfatului with a cave under Șaua Tâmpei, in which German prisoners of war were held during World War I, with both ends of the tunnel blocked. At the beginning on the 1940s, there was a proposal to dig a tunnel under Mount Tâmpa, to connect the Old City with Valea Cetății neighborhood. After Romania entered World War II, the project was abandoned. During the Communist period, when massive construction projects were undertaken in Răcădău, with over 10,000 apartments built, the plans for the tunnel were resurrected. One such plan, drafted in 1979, envisioned an east–west tunnel, with a length of 842 m, width of 9.8 m, and height of 7.65 m. The construction would have involved excavating 100,000 m³ of rock, at a cost (in 1984) of 163 million lei. Another estimate, done in 2003 by the Brașov County Council, put the cost of building the tunnel ar near 11 million euros. A long-held belief is that there is a big lake inside the mountain. Drilling the tunnel may lead to flooding the city. Yet no concrete evidence of such a lake has ever been found. What is known for sure is that there are three or four tunnels under Tâmpa, only one of which is usable at present. This tunnel connects Casa Sfatului with one of the towers of the old citadel (Turnul Cuțitarilor or Bastionul Postăvarilor). Due