Tallest masonry lighthouse

Tallest masonry lighthouse
Who
Île Vierge Lighthouse
What
82.5 metre(s)
Where
France (Plouguerneau)
When
1902

The tallest masonry lighthouse is the 82.5-m (270-ft 8-in) Île Vierge Lighthouse (48.6°N, -4.5°W) located 1.5 km (0.9 mi) off the coast of Finistère, Brittany, France. It was constructed between 1897 and 1902.

Île Vierge Lighthouse is made from two types of local rock: kersanton and granite.

The tapered stone tower reaches 73.42 m (240 ft 11 in) and the remaining height of the structure is made up by the lantern housing the lenses. The maximum diameter is 15 m (49 ft 2.5 in) at the base and 6 m (19 ft 8 in) at the apparatus room beneath the lantern; the interior diameter throughout is 5 m (16 ft 5 in).

This also makes Île Vierge the tallest traditional lighthouse (i.e., one purpose-built exclusively for aiding navigation of ships at sea). The world's tallest lighthouse overall, as listed by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency’s “List of Lights”, is the 133-m-tall (436-ft) Jeddah Port Control Tower in Saudi Arabia. The concrete and steel tower was built in 1990 primarily as an observation tower to monitor and coordinate traffic in the port. Its light has a focal height of 137 m (450 ft).