This lighthouse stands on a coast the brochures call the Riviera of Palms, but its work has nothing seaside about it: it guides the ships entering the port of Vado, one of the busiest freight harbours in Liguria. It was built by the public works engineers in 1883, and it has marked the same point of coast ever since.
What to see
It is a white tower on an octagonal plan, rising from a white three-storey building: the classic shape of Italian lighthouses of the late nineteenth century, where the keeper's house and the lantern are a single body. It stands at Porto Vado, a couple of kilometres from the centre of Vado Ligure, on the headland that closes the gulf to the west.
A little further on begins the stretch of coast of Bergeggi, with its island offshore and the protected marine area. It is a piece of Liguria where the landscape changes trade within a kilometre: on one side the cranes and the tankers at anchor, on the other the coves and the protected seabeds.
Visiting
Italian lighthouses belong to the Navy and as a rule cannot be visited inside; this one is looked at from outside, from the coast road or from the sea, and has no ticket and no hours. A quarter of an hour, or as long as you feel like staying.
Our editors' tip
Come at sunset and wait for it to light up. In the same view you will have the beam beginning to turn and the ships lying offshore waiting to enter port: two technologies a century and a half apart, still holding the same conversation.