Lighthouse of Alexandria
lighthouse in Egypt, built in the 3rd century BC and destroyed in the Middle Ages
The Lighthouse of Alexandria, sometimes called the Pharos of Alexandria, was a lighthouse built by the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (280–247 BC). It has been estimated to have been at least 100 metres (330 ft) in overall height. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, for many centuries it was one of the world's tallest man-made structures.
The lighthouse was severely damaged by three earthquakes between AD 956 and 1303 and became an abandoned ruin. It was the third longest-surviving ancient wonder, after the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the extant Great Pyramid of Giza, surviving in part until 1480, when the last of its stones was used to build the Citadel of Qaitbay on the site.
In 1994, a team of French archaeologists dived in the water of Alexandria's Eastern Harbour and discovered some remains of the lighthouse on the sea floor. In 2016, the Ministry of State of Antiquities in Egypt had plans to turn submerged ruins of ancient Alexandria, including those of the Pharos, into an underwater museum.
In 2025, parts of the lighthouse's entrance, threshold stones, and foundation paving stones were resurfaced to aid in a digital reconstruction effort intended to help scholars with architectural reconstructions.
Origin
Pharos was a small island on the western edge of the Nile Delta. In 332 BC, Alexander the Great founded the city of Alexandria on an isthmus opposite Pharos.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lighthouse of Alexandria” 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.