Lighthouse of Alexandria

Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

The Lighthouse of Alexandria, known as the Pharos, rose on a small island at the entrance of Alexandria’s harbour in the early third century BCE, under the first Ptolemies. Ancient writers describe a tall, multi-tiered tower of limestone and marble, with a square base, an octagonal middle and a cylindrical top bearing a fire and, perhaps, a polished reflector, visible far out to sea. Estimates of its height range around a hundred metres or more, making it among the tallest structures of the ancient world. It guided ships for about a thousand years, so influential that the word for lighthouse in several languages derives from Pharos. Earthquakes in the tenth, fourteenth and later centuries damaged it, and the last stones collapsed or were removed by the late fifteenth century, when Sultan Qaitbay built a fortress on the site, reusing fallen blocks. In the 1990s underwater archaeologists mapped hundreds of granite blocks, statues and columns in the harbour near the fort, some of which may have come from the lighthouse and other Ptolemaic buildings. Today the Qaitbay Citadel is a major landmark and museum, with views along the Corniche, while sunken remains are the preserve of divers and researchers with permission. The tower itself no longer exists. Visit for the fort, the harbour and the sense of ancient and medieval layers meeting at the sea’s edge.