Friday, May 20, 2022

Lighthouse of the Week, May 15-21, 2022: Ágios Nikólaos, Kéa, Greece

 

I have featured several lighthouses from the country of Greece prior to this one, which makes sense because Greece has both a lot of coastline and a lot of islands.  This lighthouse happens to be on island, Kéa, which is located fairly close to Athens.  It appears that it can be referred to as either the Kéa lighthouse or the Ágios Nikólaos lighthouse on Kéa, to distinguish it from one with a similar name on Rhodes.

Now, if you read stories of lighthouses and shipwrecks, you can probably figure that have been many instances in which people prayed to see a lighthouse, or people in a lighthouse prayed that they'd survive whatever massive manifestation of nature was hitting the coast at their location. 

In this case, the lighthouse does double duty, because there's a church right next to it.   So let's learn more from the Lighthouse Directory:

"1831. Active; focal plane 32 m (105 ft); two white flashes every 10 s. 8 m (26 ft) square stone tower with lantern and gallery, rising from a 1-story stone keeper's house. Lighthouse painted white, lantern dome green. ... This is the one of the first lighthouses built by the Greek government after Greece won its independence. It appears to have been renovated recently. The Orthodox chapel of Ágios Nikólaos (St. Nicholas) is attached to the lighthouse."
Locationally, it's on a very long point of land.  I couldn't find a great aerial picture showing that, but they do exist.  You can look at the location on the island here;  zoom out to see how close Athens is to the island.  At the resolution of the map at the link, you'll see that there are a lot of churches on this island.

After all that, here are the pictures.










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