Chipiona Lighthouse

Historia

Chipiona Lighthouse, also known as Punta del Perro Light is an active 19th century lighthouse in Chipiona, in the province of Cádiz, Spain. At a height of it is the seventeenth tallest "traditional lighthouse" in the world, as well as the tallest in Spain. It is located on Punta del Perro, a projection of land into the Atlantic Ocean in the city of Chipiona, about southwest of the Guadalquivir entrance, and serves as the landfall light for Seville.HistoryA previous lighthouse was present at the same site from the Roman period, and this former lighthouse gave Chipiona its name. This superb lighthouse was, according to Strabo comparable with the mythical Lighthouse of Alexandria. It was ordered to be built in 140BC by the Roman proconsul Quintus Servilius Caepio in an attempt to finally overcome the problems of the Salmedina reef at the mouth of the then river Betis, now the Guadalquivir. Its Latin name Turris caepionis (Caepio's Tower), is traditionally held to be the origin of the name Chipiona.The project to build a modern lighthouse on the site was first developed in 1862 by Jaime Font, a Catalan engineer. He placed the first stone on 30 April 1863 and it was lit for the first time in 1867. Since that time it has remained off permanently on 2 occasions. The first when it was switched off was in 1898, during the war against the United States of America over the independence of Cuba, all the lighthouses around Cadiz were turned off because an invasion was feared. The second time was in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War when it remained off for 3 years.