The Capo Mele lighthouse is still staffed: someone works inside it every day. It stands on the promontory that separates Andora from Laigueglia, and geographers use it as a marker: this is where the Gulf of Genoa ends to the west. The Civil Engineers finished building it in 1856 and the architecture has barely changed since; what changed was the colour of the render, which went from yellow to red. The lamp burned petroleum until 1909, then moved to acetylene produced on site with three sets of lights, and from 1936 to dissolved acetylene. The war left it badly damaged: repairs ran between 1947 and 1948, and in 1949 electricity arrived, which earned it the classification of aeronautical-maritime lighthouse.
What to see
The tower is a circular masonry shaft 25 metres high, with a diameter of 3.82 metres at lantern level. The lantern is the original one from the middle of the nineteenth century: twelve-sided, with three courses of flat glass, reached by a staircase of 74 steps. Against the tower stands the three-storey masonry building where the keepers live: it is the part that says most about daily life at a manned station.
Capo Mele reports to the Comando Zona Fari of the Italian Navy, based in La Spezia, which looks after every lighthouse in the upper Tyrrhenian. The Navy has run Italian navigation lights since 1910, with both military and civilian technicians: 128 offshore lighthouses spread over some 8,000 kilometres of coast. In other words, what you see from the road is not a romantic ruin but a working installation, with shifts and maintenance.
Visiting
The Aurelia road crosses the cape between Andora and Laigueglia, and the lighthouse is something you look at from outside: as a Navy station it has no opening hours and no ticket office, and access depends on occasional open days. The best view is from below, from the promenade at Laigueglia or the beach at Andora, with the red tower above the scrub. If you walk up the cape road, allow for the gradient and for very little shade.
Our editors' tip
Go in the last hour of daylight. The cape faces west and the sun drops along the line geographers chose as the edge of the gulf: the red render turns orange and the twelve-sided lantern starts to flash while the sky is still bright. We plan on a long stop and bring something to drink, because there is nothing up there.