Cape Santiago Lighthouse, Philippines
lighthouse in the Philippines
Cape Santiago Lighthouse, also known as Faro de Cabo Santiago (Filipino: Parola ng Cabo Santiago), is a historic lighthouse located about 130 kilometres (81 mi) southwest of Manila in Barangay Bagong Silang, Calatagan, Batangas, Philippines. It is the oldest working lighthouse in Batangas and one of the oldest working lighthouses in the Philippines. It serves as a guide for ships passing through the Verde Island Passage and entering Manila Bay.
History
The Cape Santiago Lighthouse was among the lighthouses constructed by the Spanish colonial authorities in the Philippines from 1846 to 1896 as part of the Plan General de Alumbrado de Maritimo de las Costas del Archipelago de Filipino (Masterplan for the
Lighting of the Maritime Coasts of the Philippine Archipelago), the goal of which was to install 55 lighthouses all over the archipelago, including its remotest corners.
In 1887, Spanish engineer Magin Pers y Pers, who also designed the lighthouses at Cape Bojeador and Cape Engaño, proposed the construction of a lighthouse in Cape Santiago after conducting a site evaluation. Don Santiago Zobel, the rich landowner of Hacienda Bigaa in Calatagan, donated the one-hectare property where the lighthouse was constructed.
Construction company Aldecoa y Compania constructed the lighthouse based on a design by Spanish engineer Guillermo Brockman. Made of brick and lime cement, the red round structure is 15.5 metres (51 ft) tall and was modeled after Europe's medieval castles. A lighthouse keeper's house was also built beside the lighthouse tower where the keeper and his or her family can take up residence. The lighthouse was inaugurated and lit on December 15, 1890.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cape Santiago Lighthouse, Philippines” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.