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"On This Side of the Lighthouse" Development of Lighthouses in Naples  First, an
irrelevant item about lighthouses: the underlined phrase
above the title is a strange expression not used since the
unification of Italy (1861). Older texts printed in the
Kingdom of Naples commonly referred to the island of
Sicily as al di
là del faro (beyond the lighthouse) and to
the rest of the kingdom on the boot of Italy (where the
capital city of Naples was located) as al di qua del faro
(on this side of the lighthouse). The reference was to the
lighthouse at Messina on the peninsular side of the strait
between the "toe of the boot" and Sicily. The usage goes
back to the Angevin rule of the kingdom in the 1300s and
1400s.
 In any event,
lighthouses or at least signal fires have been around ever
since early cave-sailor decided he would really like to
sail into a harbor instead of into the rocks next to the
entrance. The transition from signal fires to modern
lighthouses (from wood to animal fats to kerosine to
electricity) is beyond the scope of this entry; suffice it
say that as splendid as we like to imagine the Lighthouse
at Alexandria (image, right—one of the Seven Wonders of
the Ancient World), ancient lighthouses were probably not
much better than a full moon to help you see where you
were sailing. The truly modern lighthouse had to await the
genius of Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788–1827), the French
engineer whose design for a lens (now named for him)
allowed the construction of multi-part, thin, light lenses
without the size and weight required by lenses of
conventional design. His lens revolutionized lighthouses,
focusing 85% of the light of a lamp versus the 20% focused
with the parabolic reflectors of the time. The first such
Fresnel lens was installed in 1823 in the Cordouan
lighthouse at the mouth of the Gironde estuary in France.
Other places in the world changed over as quickly as they
could.The Bourbons were restored to the throne of Naples in 1815. One of the marks of the "relaunching" of the dynasty was the attention paid to public works, particularly those in the important area of ports and harbors, naturally including lighthouses. The first Neapolitan scientist to propose the adoption of the new Fresnel system was physicist Macedonio Melloni (1789-1854). (Melloni is best remembered as the creator and first director of the Mt. Vesuvius geological observatory in 1841). In 1836, he proposed installing Fresnel lenses at the port of Naples and at Nisida. The installation of the Fresnel lens at the Nisida lighthouse occurred in July of 1841; local sources proudly called it "the first lens lighthouse on this side of the Alps." It was a great step forward for the kingdom in terms of keeping on a par with technical developments in the rest of Europe. That was also the year in which the Commission for Lighthouse and Beacons came into being with the task of applying the new system in the entire Gulf of Naples and eventually the rest of the kingdom. Melloni was in charge of the technical side; a number of others devoted themselves to architecture and design. Great effort was given to the design of these structures. The designers used the vocabulary of classical architecture—base, shaft, capital, dorian, fluting, etc.—in describing a lighthouse tower, for example. They weren't just putting up traffic-lights for boats; they were building coastal towers meant to please the eye and the spirit. Some of that is still evident in the photos, below. The commission decided to have 10 lighthouses as an initial goal; these were in the most obvious places: the Port of Naples (2), the island of Capri, Castellammare, Punta Campanella, Nisida, Baia, Capo Miseno, the island of Procida, and at Forio on the island of Ischia.
 Work on the lighthouses
at the port of Naples was begun in September 1841. By
1847, six of the ten were complete. By 1850 attention
turned elsewhere in the kingdom, to the Calabrian and
Sicilian coasts as well as islands, including Ponza (see
map, below), where the structure was called "the first
lighthouse in the Kingdom" (meaning northernmost). In 1859
a General Plan for the
Systematic Lighting of the Coasts of the Kingdom 'On
this Side of the Lighthouse' was published.
(There was a separate plan for Sicily.) The plan called
for 67 lighthouses; at the time of publication, there were
only 16 in existence. A royal decree approved the building
of 41 of the remaining 51. The rest were put off. The
study had also looked into the feasibility of restoring
and using some of the many old Saracen
towers along Italian coasts in order to defray
expenses. Indeed, one of the constant complaints of
members of the commission was that they were hindered by
the tightwad treasury of the kingdom; as a result, in
spite of the large, impressive Neapolitan fleet, the
development of lighthouses lagged behind the rest of
Europe, including other Italian states (still independent
at the time) such as Sardinia and Tuscany. The unification
of Italy (1861) changed the situation. In 1873 a
commission for Ports, Beaches and Lighthouses was
established within the High Council for Public Works and
the first catalog of all lighthouses in the new united
Italy was published.
----->There is a separate
entry on Ponza here<-----
 The illustration, right,
shows the location of lighthouses in and near the Gulf of
Naples and the Campania region in general. (A few are
shown below. Sooner or later, I may get them all.)For various reasons (such as modern electronic navigational aids aboard many vessels), lighthouses are not as necessary as they once were. (All sailors I have talked to, however, tell me that GPS navigation is fine etc. etc, but they really like to see (!) the light from the lighthouse at night.) Some elements of the lighthouse have, indeed, become, anachronisms; for example, to my knowledge, the only one of the lighthouses in the illustration that still employs a real, human lighthouse keeper is the one on Capri (see this link). There is more than just nostalgia here; there is something primordial and even mystical connected to lighthouses. Lucien Steil writes in "Metaphysical Archaeology of Lighthouses" in the American Arts Quarterly, Volume 27, number 2: In control of visible and invisible dangers, in convivial serenity with the infinity of seas and skies, superbly coordinating the movements of ships, planets and waves, lighthouses are superbly lonesome and solitary, yet still an intrinsically integrated part of a meaningful, all-encompassing order. Lighthouses inhabit natural and metaphysical landscapes like compassionate hermits...
—*note: Alexandria lighthouse. The chances are good that it did look something like this. The image looks almost exactly like the Tower of Hercules in north-western Spain; it is an ancient Roman lighthouse, restored, still in working order, and said to be modeled on the Alexandria lighthouse because it used to be called the Farum Brigantium, from the Greek pharos, the name of the island where the Greek lighthouse stood. The Tower of Hercules is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. ^up sources: —Cirillo, Ornella.
Illuminare le coste: i fari del golfo di
Napoli nel XIX secolo [Illuminating the
Coasts: Lighthouses in the Gulf of Naples in the
19th Century] from the website
of the Italian
Association of the History of Engineering. Not
dated.
—Colombo, Antonio. "I Porti e gli Arsenali di Napoli" [The Ports and Shipyards of Naples] in Napoli Nobilissima, year 3, series in issues 1, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 9. 1894. —Spadetta, Pietro.
"La Laterna del
Molo" [the Pier Lantern] in Napoli Nobilissima,
year 1, issue 7, pp. 109-111. 1892.
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