For the first Lighthouse of the Week of 2015, I chose the lighthouse on the westernmost point of the European mainland, Cabo da Roca in Portugal. It's a historic lighthouse on a spectacular location, and the UNC lighthouse site has a lot of info on it, from which I've excerpted what's below.
"1772. Active; focal plane 165 m (541 ft); four white flashes every 18 s. 22 m (72 ft) square stone tower, rising from a 1-story keeper's complex. 3rd order Fresnel lens in use since 1946. Tower painted white with unpainted stone trim; lantern painted red. ... This was the first Portuguese lighthouse built "from scratch," although several earlier lights were installed in existing buildings. ... Spain's Cabo Finisterre and Portugal's Cabo de São Vicente may be more famous as western endpoints of Europe, but Cabo da Roca, the "Cape of the Rock", is actually the westernmost point of the Eurasian continent (at 9° 29.8' W). The Romans called the cape Promontorium Magnum--the Great Cape. In 1997 the town council of Sintra erected a plaque at the lighthouse that reads in part, "Cabo da Roca: Onde a terra se acaba e o mar começa" (Here ends the land and begins the sea), a line from the famous poet Luís de Camões. Despite this geographical significance, the light here is not as important to navigators as the lights of Cabo Carvoeiro to the north and Cabo Raso to the south. As a result, the lighthouse was long neglected; not until 1897 did it have a Fresnel lens, and for the next 50 years it had only a fourth order lens."
It's obviously photogenic.
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| by Joao Campos |
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| by Visual Escapes |
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