Going forward, we pass the Seven Beech Trees landmark and reach the 2700-year-old Hallstatt-cemetery (burial mounds or tumuli), after which the trail enters the early Iron Age earthwork surrounded by one of Europe’s tallest rampart system.
The Várhely Lookout stands here. Moving on, we soon catch sight of Sopronbánfalva, where the 8.6 km long trail ends. Alternatively, the Várhely hillfort can be reached from Sopronbánfalva by a shorter walk along the same trail. It seems likely that one of the prehistoric routes to the site, located on the highest peak of the mountain range, led through this area.
A favourable geographical location and topography were decisive factors in the prehistory of Sopron and its immediate surroundings. The proximity of Lake Fertő and the intersection of north to south and east to west roads created conditions conducive to human settlement. The Early Iron Age is a particularly important historical period in this respect since the impact of hilltop settlements, fortifications and tumulus cemeteries on the landscape can still be felt today. Between the 9th and 5th centuries BC, archaeologically called the Hallstatt period, the Danube region was part of an extensive culture province whose monuments and relics, resembling the ones from Sopron, can also be found in Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, and Slovakia. This archaeological heritage trail, created by Archaeolingua Foundation as part of the Iron-Age-Danube INTERREG project cofinanced by the European Union and Hungary and in cooperation with the Sopron Educational Forestry LLC, draws attention to this monumental and spectacular, yet extremely vulnerable prehistoric landscape.
Sopron-Várhely is surrounded by an extensive double rampart system following the shape of the hill. During the excavations in the 1970s, the main rampart and the outer rampart were cut through at ten points. It could be conclusively established that the hilltop settlement was occupied from the Late Bronze Age (from the 13th century BC onward) and that the construction of the ramparts was begun shortly after the settlement’s foundation. The hillfort could best be approached from the southwest, i.e. from the area of the burial mounds, just like today, and therefore more massive defences were built in this area in the Early and Late Iron Age. First, a curved outer rampart was connected to the main rampart, and two additional outer defences were built in the Late Celtic period (2nd-1st century BC). Of these, the outermost one is a rampart with a characteristic inward curve, which flanked the road leading to the entrance gate, as shown by the reconstructions. It seems likely that at roughly the same time, two smaller ramparts were raised inside the settlement, which served to divide its inner area. The latest fortifications can be found above and between the mounds of the Hallstatt period, meaning that they are quite certainly later than the cemetery.