Access GenovaStriped churches, painted facades, and public lifts up to the rooftops.
The Lanterna against a pink evening sky, the city's arms painted on its lower stage
THE LIGHTHOUSE OVER THE PORT

The Lanterna

The tower that has stood for the city since the Middle Ages: seventy-seven metres of masonry on a rock at the harbour mouth, rebuilt in 1543, reached by a walkway along the old walls.

Alessandro_Tacchino, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
IWhat you are looking at

The Lanterna

Masts in the old port at dusk, the Lanterna standing beyond them
Masts in the old port at dusk, the Lanterna standing beyond themKC2001, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
  1. IThe two stagesTwo square shafts, each capped by a terrace, one set back above the other
  2. IIThe lanternThe glazed chamber at the top, still a working light for the port of Genoa
  3. IIIThe coat of armsThe city's arms were painted high on the lower stage in 1340 and are still renewed
  4. IVThe walkwayA raised path of about eight hundred metres along the old walls, above the working quays
  5. VThe museumRooms in the fortifications at the foot of the tower, on the city and its port
  6. VIThe first terraceOne hundred and seventy-two of the tower's three hundred and sixty-five steps lead to it
IIIn full

The sight in detail

Why it matters

No other building stands for Genoa the way this one does. The Lanterna is on the football badges, the beer labels and the road signs; sailors have steered by it for eight hundred years; and it is the tallest traditional masonry lighthouse in the Mediterranean, seventy-seven metres of tower on a rock that lifts it to a hundred and seventeen metres above the water.

Sunset behind the container cranes, with the Lanterna in silhouette
Sunset behind the container cranes, with the Lanterna in silhouetteGraziella taibi, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

It is also a working light, operated by the navy, which is why only part of it can be climbed. The second terrace and the lantern chamber are naval property and not open; the public climb stops at the first terrace, which is high enough.

The tower's age is often overstated. A light stood on this rock from the early twelfth century, but the tower you see was rebuilt in 1543, after the earlier one was wrecked in the fighting between Genoa and its neighbours, and the work was paid for by the Bank of Saint George.

Its shape is unusually legible for a lighthouse: two square towers stacked rather than a single tapering shaft, each with a projecting terrace, the upper one set back from the lower. That silhouette is what makes it recognisable in profile from thirty kilometres out at sea, and what makes it so easy to draw that the city has used it as a logo for the best part of a century.

The walk out to it

The Lanterna against a red evening sky above the harbour
The Lanterna against a red evening sky above the harbourPersepolis3, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Getting there is half the visit. The Lanterna cannot be reached through the port gates, which are controlled, so the way in is a pedestrian walkway of about eight hundred metres that runs from the ferry terminal, mostly cantilevered outside the old city walls and above the working quays.

It is an unusual piece of city. On one side the wall of seventeenth-century stone; on the other, below, the ferries loading for Sardinia and Sicily, the tugs, the containers and the cranes. Few European cities let a visitor walk this close to a live port.

The port and the city from the water on a clear day
The port and the city from the water on a clear dayAlexdechi, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

The walkway begins near the ferry terminal, served by city buses and about four hundred metres from Dinegro metro station; Piazza Principe station is roughly a kilometre and a half away. It is exposed, so it is windy in a blow and hot at midday in summer.

The walkway was opened in the nineteen-nineties as part of the same effort that rebuilt the waterfront, and it solved a real problem: the tower had been stranded inside the port since the nineteenth century, visible from everywhere and reachable by almost nobody. Walking out along it, with the wall on one side and the cranes below on the other, is the clearest possible statement of how this city and its port fit together.

Halfway along, the path passes the Porta Lanterna, one of the old gates of the seventeenth-century walls, and a short stretch of rampart. The park at the tower's foot is a grassy shelf above the quays, with benches and, on a clear day, a view east over the whole arc of the city.

What you actually see

Yachts in the old port at dusk, the Lanterna lit behind the masts
Yachts in the old port at dusk, the Lanterna lit behind the mastsGraziella taibi, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

The tower is severe: two plain square stages with cornices, a spiral of tiny windows, and nothing decorative except the painted arms of the commune high on the lower shaft, first put there in 1340 by a painter named Evangelista di Milano and repainted many times since.

At the foot, in the old fortifications, is a small museum about the city, the port and the tower itself, with the machinery and optics of earlier lights. It is modest, and it is included with the climb.

The climb is a masonry stair inside the wall, one hundred and seventy-two steps to the first terrace. From it you look straight down the mole, west over the container port and east over the whole city, stacked up its hillside with the hills and forts behind.

A crane barge and the harbour works below the Lanterna
A crane barge and the harbour works below the LanternaLucia canepa, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

The rock the tower stands on is no longer at the water's edge. Land reclamation for the port pushed the sea back, so the Lanterna now stands a short distance inland, above the quays rather than in the waves — a change that surprises people who know it from old pictures.

The tower has been repaired many times. Storm, siege and lightning each did damage, the light itself was modernised with a rotating Fresnel lens in the eighteen-forties, and the building was patched again after the Second World War, when the port around it was bombed heavily. What survives is a Renaissance tower carrying modern equipment.

How to visit

Two hours covers the walk out, the museum and the climb at an unhurried pace.

Harbour cranes and the snow-topped mountains behind the city
Harbour cranes and the snow-topped mountains behind the cityPaolo Trucco, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

The tower does not open every day; it is usually a weekend visit, and it shuts in bad weather because the walkway and the terrace are both exposed. Check before making the trip, which is not a short one.

Shoes with grip help on the stair, which is worn. There is no lift, and the walkway itself is level but long.

The container cranes and the Lanterna from the Belvedere Montaldo
The container cranes and the Lanterna from the Belvedere MontaldoBenjamin Smith, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

It combines naturally with the Porto Antico, a walk or one metro stop away, and with the sea museum if you want the port's history indoors first.

Honest notes

The Lanterna is best seen from a distance as well as up close: from the Bigo, from the terraces of Castelletto, or from a ferry leaving the port.

The surroundings are industrial and will stay that way. This is a monument inside a working port, not in a park.

The container terminal seen through a railing on the walk to the Lanterna
The container terminal seen through a railing on the walk to the LanternaPaolo Trucco, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

The second terrace, the one in every photograph taken from the sea, cannot be visited. What you climb to is the lower of the two.

IIIA few steps away

Where to go next