Burgas Lighthouse

Worth a detour

The light at the end of the eastern breakwater was the first port lighthouse in Bulgaria, first lit in 1899. You cannot go in — it is working equipment — but you can walk up to it through the port's public access zone, and the view back along the cliff with the Sea Garden on top of it is the one people photograph. Fifteen minutes and nothing to pay.

Story

Background

The original light of 1899 stood on a columnar structure some fifteen metres high. It was rebuilt as a cylindrical tower in 1907, and the present reinforced-concrete tower, banded white and red, dates from 1995. It is about fourteen metres tall with its light twenty-four metres above the sea, showing a white flash every three seconds and visible for fourteen nautical miles. A fog signal sounds on a thirty-second pattern.

Two smaller lights mark the harbour mouth, built in 1900 and known to everyone as the red one and the green one, after the colours around their lantern rooms. Both originally showed red; the green one changed colour in 1931, when the pair were electrified.

What the place is good for is the walk. From the pier the central beach runs south for the better part of two kilometres, wide sand with the park above it, and finishes against the port. Twenty minutes each way at a stroll, and early morning is the time — the beach is being groomed, the light is behind you, and the town is not yet awake. It is also the point where the tourist coast stops and the working city starts: beyond the breakwater are the cranes, the tanker berths and the refinery on the far shore of the lake. Do not confuse this light with the one on St Anastasia island, which is a different tower entirely.