A cable car makes the journey between the cabin/restaurant Casa Pădurarului at the base of the mountain to the Restaurantul Panoramic, on its crest, in under three minutes.

Nicolae Drăganu started from the observation that Albanian and southern Italian dialects as well as Catalan have very similar words meaning "boulder", "hillock" or "rocky incline".

Gustav Weigand declared that the toponym simply derived from the adjective tâmp, a word of Old Bulgarian origin signifying "worn down, leveled".

[1] Iorgu Iordan was hesitant to embrace one hypothesis: he noted that the physical nature of the places called Tâmpa, which tend to be sharp mountains, favors Drăganu, as does the striking phonetic and semantic resemblance between the Romanian term and those in other languages.

The building, located between the peak and the crest[clarification needed] of Tâmpa, is presumed to have been raised in the time of the German Knights (1212–1218), or if not, was certainly fortified during their rule.

As the fortification was surrounded by precipices on three sides and was well-defended on its fourth, it was one of the most difficult to capture in Transylvania (indeed in all of Europe), and was in fact never occupied by force, only being handed over through treaties.

Around 1910, Costantin Lacea wrote that "even today the Romanian populace, especially the Costeni (inhabitants of Coastei and Costiței Streets), led by Junii Curcani ("the Young Turkeys"), go out the day after Pentecost up to the Citadel on Tâmpa, near the Cross of Cutun, and celebrate there.

In the 15th century, two watchtowers were built at the base of Tâmpa, linked to the citadel through a series of walls, which, taken together, extended from the towers to the peak of the mountain.

Turnul Cuțitarilor (the Knife-Makers' Tower), located to the right of Bastionul Țesătorilor (the Weavers' Bastion), offered an open view toward the valley (Șchei).

Turnul Cizmarilor (the Boot-Makers' Tower), located above Bastionul Postăvarilor (the Drapers' Bastion), dominated Blumăna and Curmătura (the area between Tâmpa and Dealul Melcilor – "the Hill of Snails").

[2] Around 1714 (according to other sources 1696 or 1718), the Brașov senator Johann Draudt, having converted to Catholicism, raised a chapel on Tâmpa, dedicated to Saint Leonard.

Often, the Romanians of Șchei were blamed for the chapel's destruction: one writer said that they broke its door, hurled it into the valley, and stole several objects from within.

Heavily damaged by either natural causes or, according to George Bariț, human intervention ("adverse hands"), the pyramid was ultimately removed by Austro-Hungarian authorities on April 7, 1869.

Aside from fire practice, the location had a bowling lane and a restaurant; it was decorated with numerous hunting trophies and mannequins dressed in plate armor.

Ultimately, the Dr. Nicolae Rucăreanu High School of Silviculture was raised on the location — the plot remains disputed between the Evangelical Church and the city of Brașov.

On this occasion, a monumental column topped by the statue of a Magyar archer — popularly identified with Árpád himself — was erected on Tâmpa, causing controversy inside the Romanian community.

[3] In September 1913, the monument was damaged by a bomb placed at its base, an attack carried out by two terrorists, Ilie Cătărău and Timofei Kirilov, who were fighting against Hungarian rule in Transylvania.

In December of the same year, the monument was heavily damaged by a thunderstorm: the "Árpád statue" fell from atop the column and shattered into pieces.

The statue's debris was removed by Communist Romanian authorities in 1966, and the head is preserved by the Parish House of the Reformed Church in Brașov.

Supplied every day by the tenant, who led his donkey up 25 serpentine windings, it became a regular spot for city residents who were attracted by the panoramic scenery of Brașov at nighttime; in 1905, it was equipped with a terrace reaching over the steep slope.

Casa Pădurarului ("the Forester House") is a rustic restaurant located at the base of Tâmpa, about halfway along the pedestrian road there.

Before 1989, when tourists exited the cable car, they were met by an enormous stuffed brown bear, standing menacingly on two feet.

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.