Tower of Hercules — fortified tower
Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez (Lmbuga) · CC BY-SA 3.0

Tower of Hercules

Torre de Hércules

  • 2 min read
  • 43.386° N 8.406° W
  • UNESCO World Heritage

Interesting facts

  • A cornerstone at the base names the designer, Gaius Sevius Lupus, an architect from Aeminium, today's Coimbra in Portugal, who dedicated the work to Mars.
  • Of the tower's roughly 55 metres, about 34 are surviving Roman masonry; the top 21 metres were added during the 18th-century restoration.
  • The Roman tower was shorter and wider than today's, ringed by an external spiral ramp whose diagonal outline is still traced on the restored walls.
  • The earliest known written mention comes from the historian Paulus Orosius around 415–417, who described a very tall lighthouse at Brigantia looking out towards Britain.
  • The 18th-century restoration was carried out by the naval engineer Eustaquio Giannini, and UNESCO later singled it out as exemplary for protecting the Roman core.
  • According to the Irish Book of Invasions, the Galician king Breogán built a tower here so tall that his sons glimpsed a green shore and sailed off to settle Ireland.
  • A Coruña's coat of arms shows the tower standing over a skull and crossbones, a nod to the legend that Geryon's head lies buried beneath it.
  • Medieval crusader fleets bound for the Holy Land routinely stopped at the lighthouse, and some of their chroniclers credited its construction to Julius Caesar.
  • It remains the second-tallest lighthouse in Spain, surpassed only by the lighthouse at Chipiona in Andalusia.
  • The grounds around the tower hold a sculpture garden with works by Pablo Serrano and Francisco Leiro.

Why it is worth it

There were dozens of lighthouses like this one once, scattered around the edges of the Roman world. There is exactly one left that still works. The Tower of Hercules, built or substantially rebuilt during the reign of Trajan in the early second century AD, has been guiding ships into what's now A Coruña for roughly nineteen centuries, and it is both the oldest lighthouse in the world still in active service and the only Roman one still doing the job it was built for. Its original name, Farum Brigantium, borrowed directly from pharos, the Greek word that also named the famous lighthouse at Alexandria — a deliberate echo, from one wonder to another.

What's easy to miss standing in front of it is that you're looking at two buildings stacked on top of each other. In the eighteenth century the tower was restored in the Neoclassical style then in fashion, and that restoration wrapped a new stone skin around the structure rather than replacing it — so the smooth, symmetrical facade visible today is largely an 18th-century addition, while the Roman core it covers is still there underneath, load-bearing and original. UNESCO recognised exactly this layering when it listed the tower as a World Heritage Site in 2009: not a Roman ruin, and not really a Georgian folly either, but both at once.

The legend attached to the site does what legends usually do for old landmarks with no surviving foundation story: it fills the gap with something more satisfying than we'll ever get to the truth of. Hercules, the story goes, sailed here to defeat Geryon, a three-bodied tyrant who demanded human tribute from the local population. After killing him, Hercules buried Geryon's severed head on this exact headland and ordered a tower built above it, then founded a city on the spot named for the first woman who had lived there — a myth Galicia has held onto for so long that A Coruña's own name is still popularly traced back to it.

Getting there

Located in A Coruña. A Coruña Airport (LCG) is about 10 km away.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Galicia 7The Most Beautiful Places in Spain 150The Most Remarkable Fortified Towers 6The Greatest UNESCO-Listed Engineering Wonders in Spain 6The Most Remarkable Monuments in Spain 7The Most Remarkable Ancient Monuments 7The Most Beautiful Ancient Castles, Palaces and Fortresses 8The Most Beautiful Ancient Squares, Streets and Monuments 8The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Castles, Palaces and Fortresses in Spain 9The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments in Spain 13The Greatest Engineering Wonders in Spain 14The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses in Spain 18The Most Remarkable UNESCO-Listed Monuments 20The Most Beautiful Lighthouses 26The Greatest UNESCO-Listed Engineering Wonders 30The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Squares, Streets and Monuments 33The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Spain 37The Most Remarkable Monuments 56The Most Remarkable Ancient Places 78The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Castles, Palaces and Fortresses 92The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments 173The Greatest Engineering Wonders 271The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses 302The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites 557

From the encyclopaedia

The Tower of Hercules is the oldest known extant Roman lighthouse. Built in the 1st century, the tower is located on a peninsula about 2.4 km (1.5 mi) from the centre of A Coruña, Galicia, in northwestern Spain. Until the 20th century, it was known as the Farum Brigantium. The Latin word farum is derived from the Greek Φάρος, Pharos, for the Lighthouse of Alexandria in Egypt. The structure stands 55 metres (180 ft) tall and overlooks the North Atlantic coast of Spain. The tower was renovated in 1791.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

43.38583, -8.40639per Wikidata