São Thomé Lighthouse
lighthouse in Campos dos Goytacases, Brazil

São Thomé Lighthouse is located in Praia do Farol (Lighthouse Beach), in the Brazilian municipality of Campos dos Goytacazes, Rio de Janeiro.
History
The work was designed by the French company Barbier & Fenestre, and it was based on the openwork lighthouse design of Swedish engineer Nils Gustaf von Heidenstam, who used pull rods and tension bars to create this innovative model for a stable iron frame structure. The first of its kind was the Pater Noster lighthouse, built on Haneskär Island in Sweden.
The monument was built by a French firm in the year 1877. Its inauguration was in 1882, commemorating the birthday of Princess Isabel. It was made of a special corrosion resistant iron, which is why it is still in good condition. The lantern was surrounded by glass pane and fitted with a 3-centimeter-thick glass lens with a 1 kW bulb, and emitted 8 fan-shaped lanes of light reaching 25 miles or so. In 1967, there was a fire in the lantern and the headlight was replaced by a lower one, and its range was reduced to 19 miles (31 km).
At the time of its inauguration, it worked kerosene, but currently it works with commercial electric power, but it has 2 generators and can still run the kerosene as originally, if necessary. It lights up according to sunset time and makes the full turn in 68 seconds.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19708089. Authority coordinates are -22.042, -41.053. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1877, 1882 and 1967.
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This entry incorporates text from “São Thomé Lighthouse” 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.