The Károly IV Stairs connects the Tihany Benedictine Abbey and Kossuth Lajos Street, and indirectly Mádl Ferenc Square. The Csokonai terrace gardens can also be approached from here.

According to the memories of the old pictures, a gravel ascent led to the abbey. This is where the people of Tihany, always zealous in their faith, went to mass. Over the years, the needs have also changed and become higher. For many decades, a series of steps made of natural stone connected the abbey and the main street. However, it was difficult to walk on, slippery, and there were also problems with the drainage of rainwater.
In recent years, the weather has left its mark on the stairs made of large cubic stones, which has become aesthetically unworthy next to the renewed spaces and green surfaces. Starting from the Abbey building and looking down from the top of the stairs, a wonderful panorama of the Inner-Lake, the western basin of lake Balaton, opens up to the visitor. A small flight of stairs leads to the top level of the Csokonai terrace gardens, where you can enjoy the unique view even while resting. Rethinking the spatial structure and function of the stairs, a demanding and unified view welcomes the visitor at the bottom of the stairs. At Kossuth Street, the stairs turn, and a curtain of water falls from the retaining wall. On the retaining wall, the tale of János Garay: The Tihany echo can be read on a board, which tells the legend of the goat nails and the Tihany echo.
Goat nails are visible on the wall below the water curtain. The Tihany goats' nails is actually the calcified remains of a mussel that once lived in the Pannonian Sea. In the first half of the 20th century, selling goat nails was a serious source of income for local children. The first stanza of the Garay-tale was recited to the tourists arriving here, and they also received goat nails for some money. It proved to be such a good source of income that the resourceful young people of the last century "used up" Tihany's goat nails reserves. The Gödrös settle-ment preserves the memory of this activity, since it was here that most of the goat's nails were excavated in Lake Balaton, leaving behind pits in the water bed.
Walking up on the renewed Károly IV Stairs, some of the steps show the most important years and events of the thousand-year history of the Abbey and the settlement, thus guiding the visitor from the founding of the Abbey in 1055 to the present day.
From 2021, based on the decision of the representative body, based on the proposal of the parish, the stairs are named after Károly IV, in the remembrance of the last Hungarian king.

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