The Gibraltar Nature Reserve will sell you a £30 ticket that lists O'Hara's Battery among the sites it covers. The Reserve's own page for that battery says the site is undergoing refurbishment and is not open to the public. Both pages are live on the same website this morning. That contradiction has been sitting there for months. We went through the planning file, the government press releases and the Reserve's own pages, and the answer is documented in full. It is just spread across four places that nobody reads together, which is why every other page about the top of the Rock either guesses or stays quiet. Start with the number everybody quotes. The Rock of Gibraltar is 426 metres high. That figure is correct, it is the one we use across this site, and it is not the height of O'Hara's Battery. The [Nature Reserve's page for the Mediterranean Steps](https://naturereserve.gi/our-rock/mediterranean-steps/) puts the top of that climb, at the battery, at 419 metres, rising from 180 metres at Jews' Gate. Lord Airey's Battery, a few minutes north along the same ridge, sits at 418 metres. So the battery is near the summit rather than on it, roughly seven metres below the true high point of the ridge. Most reference pages, Wikipedia included, give the battery 426 metres and 1,398 feet, which is the Rock's own figure borrowed and applied to a site just below it. It is a small error. It is repeated nearly everywhere, and the Reserve's survey figure is the one we would trust. |Point on the ridge|Height above sea level| |Summit of the Rock|426 m| |O'Hara's Battery, top of the Mediterranean Steps|419 m| |Lord Airey's Battery|418 m| |Skywalk viewing platform|340 m| |Jews' Gate, start of the Mediterranean Steps|180 m| Our [Mediterranean Steps guide](/blog/mediterranean-steps-hike-gibraltar-highest-point) flagged this in September and said plainly that we could not confirm whether the battery was open. Here is the resolution, in the order the documents were published. The Government [announced on 22 June 2023](https://www.gibraltar.gov.gi/press-releases/oharas-battery-re-opened-to-visitors-4142023-8984) that O'Hara's Battery had reopened to visitors the previous day, after restoration and maintenance by the Upper Rock Maintenance team, with the Alabaré charity volunteer group painting the 9.2 inch gun. Read to the end of that release and it says something the summaries leave out. Access to the gun platform itself would continue to be temporarily restricted until the restoration works to the gun were complete. So the 2023 reopening was never a reopening of the gun. The battery opened. The platform holding the thing people walk up a mountain to see stayed shut. The Reserve's [plan your visit page](https://naturereserve.gi/plan-your-visit/) still shows the battery among the 17 attractions a Walk The Rock pass covers. That is a standing list of what the ticket includes. It is not a statement about what is open this week, and it was never written to be read as one. The [Reserve's page for the battery](https://naturereserve.gi/our-rock/oharas-battery/) carries the current notice: the site is undergoing refurbishment and is not open to the public. That page is the specific one, it is the most recent, and it is the one to believe. |Source|What it says|How to read it| |Government press release, 22 June 2023|Battery reopened 21 June 2023, gun platform still restricted|True when written, and the gun was never part of it| |Nature Reserve plan your visit page|Battery shown among the 17 attractions|What the ticket covers, not what is open today| |Nature Reserve battery page|Undergoing refurbishment, not open to the public|Current, specific, and the one that governs| On [18 August 2026 the Gibraltar Chronicle reported](https://www.chronicle.gi/plans-aim-to-turn-oharas-battery-into-immersive-heritage-attraction/) that plans had reached the Development and Planning Commission to turn the battery into a full heritage attraction. The application was filed by Visionary Tourism Investments (Gibraltar) Limited, with Garcia+Cox Architects Ltd named as architects, and the Chronicle describes a privately funded Government project brought forward through the Ministry for Environment. The proposed visit runs through the existing gateway, then the control room, the machinery spaces, the magazines and the underground tunnels, finishing at the restored gun on its platform above the Strait. Alongside that go ticketing and orientation space, visitor welfare facilities, refreshments and a modest retail or souvenir area. The sensory detail in the application is the part worth knowing about. The engine room is to get controlled lighting, engine sounds, wartime military audio, subtle vibration and mist or haze. The tunnels are to use lighting and sound to recreate wartime use, including radio communications, muffled orders, footsteps, mechanical sounds and warning signals. The gun is the reason for much of it. Despite the painting done in 2023, the applicat