Mondo Knows Facts

The Tower of Hercules is the oldest working lighthouse

The Roman tower in northern Spain has guided ships since the 2nd century The lighthouse at A Coruna was built in the second century AD, probably under Trajan, and is the only Roman lighthouse known to survive with its structure largely intact. It was restored in 1791 with an outer casing that wrapped the original core, and it still flashes today. Its name comes from a legend that Hercules buried a giant there. It sits in Mondo's records & extremes collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

UNESCO

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

Go further

More facts like this

Tags: lighthouses, spain, rome

The Tower of Hercules is the oldest working lighthouse: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?
The Roman tower in northern Spain has guided ships since the 2nd century. The figure is taken from UNESCO, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a records & extremes fact?
Yes. It sits on the Records & Extremes shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?
The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.