The Genoese Lighthouse

The Genoese Lighthouse stands in the historic centre of Constanța, on the peninsular promontory, behind the statuary group centred on the bust of Mihai Eminescu, sculpted by Oscar Han. It is a few steps from the Casino and from the former Carol Hotel, today the headquarters of the Naval Command. It is a listed historic monument and the city's oldest lighthouse. The name deceives. The Genoese did indeed put in at the port of Constanța from the 13th century, when the Republic of Genoa held a Byzantine concession over Black Sea trade and maintained trading posts in cities such as Caffa and Cetatea Albă. But they built no lighthouse here, and no other Genoese structure survives in Constanța. The name's origin lies with the Ottomans. The engineer Petre Covacef, in his study "The Story of the Genoese Lighthouse," shows that the term was a label applied by the Turks who ruled Dobruja until 1878. Struck by the large, thick-walled buildings they found in Constanța, they called them, in their own tongue, "Geneviz Calee," Genoese fortress. Hence too the Genoese Quay and the Genoese Warehouses. The Turks said "Genoese" much as we today say "Swiss watch." The present lighthouse was built between 1858 and 1860, commissioned by the English Danube and Black Sea Railway Co. Limited, the same firm that laid the Cernavodă-Constanța railway and modernized the port. Work was overseen by the French engineer of Armenian origin Artin Aslan, who settled in Constanța after the Crimean War. It is said that Aslan had once been caught in a storm on the Black Sea and saved by the light of the old beacon, which guided him to the harbour. Coming ashore, he knocked at the first house he found and fell in love with the young woman who opened the door, Mairam, whom he married in 1861. He is said to have sworn then that he would build a lighthouse for sailors, and to have buried in its foundations a metal casket bearing the names of all who contributed to its construction. The structure is rectangular from the base to a height of 3.50 metres and octagonal above. A two-step plinth supports it, and the upper section ends in a cornice with corbels carrying the metal casing of the lamp, which also serves as the roof. The metal dome holds eight panes through which the light was cast, and its apex bears markers indicating the cardinal points. The lighthouse is built of natural stone blocks, dressed on every face and bound with mortar of lime, sea sand, and crushed shells. Inside, the space is cylindrical, with a spiral stone staircase of 53 steps. The structure has a central load-bearing pillar which, according to some researchers, may have come from the ancient ruins of Tomis. The light stood 21 metres above sea level. Prince Carol I visited in October 1879, and the lighthouse remained in service until 1913, when it was declared extinguished, its role in guiding ships into the harbour passing to the Carol I Lighthouse at the end of the breakwater. The last major restoration took place in 1948. In February 2020, after 107 years of darkness, the lighthouse was relit, though its bulbs now serve a purely decorative purpose. The monument appears on a Romanian postage stamp. The Genoese Lighthouse is worth seeing precisely for the gap between its name and its history: an Ottoman-British lighthouse, designed by an Armenian with French citizenship, named after Italian merchants who never laid a stone here. It is also one of the few monuments in the city to have survived every transformation of the seafront intact, and it can be seen freely, at any hour.