Lighthouses have stood along the margins of continents and islands for centuries as points of light in vast maritime territories. Rising in solitude from rocky cliffs, reefs, and headlands, these towers were tools for navigation and instruments of spatial clarity, shaping coastlines and marking the boundary between land and sea. Built to guide, warn, and locate, they constituted a global network of visibility long before the advent of digital mapping. Yet as maritime technologies evolved, many of these structures lost their original purpose. The typology, once essential, now stands at the edge of obsolescence. What remains is not merely an architectural relic, but a powerful spatial form — resilient, symbolic, and increasingly open to reinterpretation.
Long before radar, GPS, or satellite mapping systems existed, coastal civilisations developed architectural responses to the perils of maritime navigation. As early as the third century BCE, lighthouses were constructed to aid seafarers and claim visibility and project power across watery frontiers. The Pharos of Alexandria, often cited as the first true lighthouse and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, stood as a hybrid of infrastructure, monument, and urban marker — guiding ships into harbour while symbolising the intellectual and technical prowess of Ptolemaic Egypt. Similar structures followed throughout the Mediterranean and beyond: fire beacons, watchtowers, and primitive lights atop promontories. Over time, these evolved into purpose-built towers that served as vital instruments for trade and defense, shaping settlement patterns and enabling the expansion of coastal networks. From the Roman Empire's maritime infrastructure to the fortified towers of medieval ports, the lighthouse gradually assumed a recognisable typology, both architectural and symbolic, rooted in the relationship between light, place, and direction.
