1926: This Lighthouse Was The Third One Built on The Same Spot

January 9, 1926

Less than 20 months after construction on it had begun, a new lighthouse was completed in the western region of what is now the State of Libya. At the time of this lighthouse’s completion, the area of present-day Libya was an Italian colony known as Italian Tripolitania. Italian Tripolitania was unified with Italian Cyrenaica (an Italian colony in what is now the eastern region of Libya) to form Italian Libya in 1934. Libya has been an independent country since the early 1950s.

The lighthouse was built along the Mediterranean coastline and in the vicinity of the city of Tripoli. Italian architect Aldo Bruschi, in his capacity as director of the maritime section of Italian Tripolitania’s public works agency, designed the lighthouse. The reinforced concrete tower, which became known as Il Faro di Tripoli (Italian for “The Lighthouse of Tripoli”), was the third lighthouse to be constructed at that location.

The first of these lighthouses had been built sometime around 1880. This black-and-white cylindrical lower was destroyed in 1911 by Italian naval shelling during the Italo-Turkish War between the Kingdom of Italy and the Ottoman Empire. A cast-iron skeletal tower was built in 1912 as a replacement lighthouse, only to be supplanted in the following decade by Bruschi’s creation.

The third lighthouse remained in service until being demolished in 1943, just around the same time that the Axis powers (including Italy) were driven out of Italian Libya by the Allied forces as part of the North African Campaign in World War II. After the war ended, a new lighthouse was built in the area where Il Faro di Tripoli had once stood and served.

Additional information on lighthouses that have been built in the present-day State of Libya is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/lighthouse/lby.htm.