Lighthouse of Alexandria

A lighthouse is a tall tower with a light on top. It helps ships find their way and stay safe.

Long ago, the city of Alexandria in Egypt had a giant one. A fire burned at the top every night. Today a stone castle stands where the lighthouse was.

The Lighthouse of Alexandria stood on the small island of Pharos, in the harbor of Alexandria, a city on Egypt's Mediterranean coast. It was finished in about 280 BCE. It was said to be more than 110 meters (350 feet) tall, and at the time only the pyramids of Giza would have been taller among things people had built.

The lighthouse was one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, and Britannica calls it the model for every lighthouse since. Today it is gone, and the Citadel of Qaitbay stands on its site.

Britannica describes the lighthouse as the most famous of antiquity, a technological triumph and the archetype of all later lighthouses. It was built by Sostratus of Cnidus, perhaps for Ptolemy I Soter, and finished under his son Ptolemy II in about 280 BCE, on the island of Pharos in the harbor of Alexandria. It is said to have exceeded 350 ft (110 m); the only taller human-made structures of the time would have been the pyramids of Giza.

Though well known earlier, it appears in lists of the Seven Wonders only from the 6th century CE; the earliest list gives the walls of Babylon instead. Its site, at the eastern tip of the Pharos peninsula, is now occupied by the Citadel of Qaitbay, built between 1477 and 1479 over its ruins, Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities records.

Divers found many giant stones on the sea floor, right next to the castle.

Some stones weigh more than 20 tons! They also found statues, columns and the cargo of old shipwrecks.

In 1994 the Egyptian government asked archaeologist Jean-Yves Empereur to map the seabed beside the citadel before a new breakwater was built. His team found hundreds of huge stone blocks. Some are believed to have fallen from the lighthouse in the earthquake of the 1300s.

The underwater site stretches 150 meters from the citadel, 6 to 8 meters deep. More than 3,000 pieces have been recorded, including columns, statues and bases, and the cargo of three shipwrecks. Divers also found a giant statue of a king, thought to show Ptolemy II. Because of these finds, the breakwater plan was dropped.

Britannica recounts how, in 1994, Jean-Yves Empereur, founder of the Centre d'Études Alexandrines, was asked to map the area off Pharos before a concrete breakwater was laid; he recorded hundreds of huge masonry blocks and much statuary, including a colossal 3rd-century BCE statue of a king thought to represent Ptolemy II. The government abandoned the breakwater and planned an underwater park instead.

The Ministry describes the Qaitbay Fort site as extending 150 m from the citadel at depths of 6 to 8 m. More than 3,000 architectural pieces (columns, statues, bases, capitals) dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 7th century CE have been recorded, with three shipwrecks known only from their cargo; 36 large pieces are displayed in the Roman theater at Kom El-Dikka. Some material was thrown into the harbor in 1167, in Saladin's time, to hinder attack from the sea.