Stunning panoramic city view from Victoria Peak Hong Kong

Discover the Best of Hong Kong with Jamie

The Number 1 place to visit in Hong Kong | Victoria Peak

For breathtaking panoramic city and skyline views day or night

Sadly virtually everyone who goes to Victoria Peak for the view goes to the wrong location! The Peak Tower 428 Sky Terrace is completely the wrong place.

I have a thing about Victoria Peak or the Peak as it is known in Hong Kong, I have lived in Hong Kong for 52 years and have been to the Peak over 6,000 times since 1972. That I guess makes me uniquely qualified to talk about Victoria Peak and I discovered the Lugard Road Lookout (as it is now known) on January 3rd 1972.

The information below shows how very few people even know about the place in Hong Kong to get the best city view in the world, day or night and it is so easy to get too if you have the right how to guide or you are with a private tour guide.

May 5th 2024

Here is some context for you with regards to the reviews for the panoramic city views at Victoria Peak and amazingly hardly anyone goes to the place I visit. It is certainly not unknown to Hong Kong residents, the history of the Lugard Road Lookout goes back over 100 years.

So here are those very telling review numbers

• The Peak Tower Viewing Terrace and Peak Tram | number of reviews on Tripadvisor = 9,104

• The Peak Tower Viewing Terrace only | number of reviews on Tripadvisor = 992

• The Lions Pavilion Viewing Terrace | number of reviews on Tripadvisor = 528

• The Peak Galleria Viewing Terrace | number of reviews on Tripadvisor = 202

• Lugard Road Lookout | number of reviews on Tripadvisor = 9

A lot of the reviews for the Peak Tower and Peak Tram are for the viewing platform Peak Tower Sky Terrace 428, the Peak Tram ends at the Peak Tower so many people just go to the Sky Terrace for the view which charges a hefty admission fee and I need to emphasise, the Peak Tower Sky Terrace 428 does NOT have 360o degree panoramic views of Hong Kong Island as many reviewers claim, not even close.

I absolutely accept that the Peak Tram Company which owns the Peak Tower has to claim they have the best view at the Sky Terrace 428, that is a commercial decision and people will accept that because hardly anyone knows about the Lugard Road Lookout view.

It is a very slick operation and a lot of money has gone into the Peak Tower and Peak Tram, the Peak Tram stops literally within the Peak Tower and some very careful planning makes it inevitable that you get on the complex sets of escalators that whisk you up to the Sky Terrace 428 viewing terrace and you are charged a hefty fee for the view and due to crowds you can wait for a while to actually get in.

Inevitably over the years more and more people discovered the Lion’s Pavilion Viewing Terrace literally a minutes walk away and for the life of me I cannot understand why they did not make that 10 times bigger when they built it, I guess it is what it is.

The view from the Lion’s Pavilion is free but gets overcrowded with just 30 people there, the Peak Galleria Terrace on the roof of the Peak Galleria Mall is a little hard to find (really) but is also free, both are roughly a 1 minute walk from the Peak Tower and the view is the same view as the Peak Tower Sky Terrace 428

For the record, the view from my place - the Lugard Road Lookout is at roughly 425m and the Sky Terrace is 428m, in other words, almost the same height. (despite people claiming otherwise)

I always feel very sad when Mass Market Tour Guides and Private Tour Guides conveniently do NOT mention the Lugard Road Lookout when they arrive at the Peak, it could be a weather issue (ie the sun is not shining) or a timing issue and I inevitably start thinking it is because it takes 20 minutes to get there, walking and 20 minutes to get back and yet the walk itself is very, very interesting, so the guides are lazy and that is just awful, so many people miss out on the greatest city view in the world because of laziness on the part of the guide!

I should point out that I am very, very passionate about telling the Hong Kong Story and there is NO better place to do this than the Lugard Road Lookout, which I might add is invariably very quiet with hardly any visitors. (Sunday is a little different, lots of Hong Konger’s out for a weekend hike along Lugard Road dressed up to the nines in branded hiking gear)

I made it my mission in life to take everyone to my spot and my explanations on what you where looking at puts everything into perspective and for many of my guests it was the highlight of their visit.

Finally, The Hong Kong Tourism Board being what it is comes up with all sorts of slogans, The Lugard Road Lookout being one of them, another one I suspect they came up with is the Peak Circular Walk or Peak Circle Walk, essentially you walk to the Lugard Road Lookout, see the views and keep walking (rather than turning back) - Lugard Road then ends and meets up with Harlech Road and as long as you stick to Harlech Road you will end up back at the Peak Tower after an additional 40 - 60 minutes after leaving the Lugard Road Lookout viewpoint. I will do a how to guide for this in the future

The view from the Lugard Road Lookout (free) is far, far superior to that of the Peak Tower Sky Terrace 428, The Lion’s Pavilion Viewing Terrace and the Peak Galleria Viewing Terrace and yet most people have no idea it even exists.

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52 years living in Hong Kong, our family arrived on January 2nd 1972

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