The Ponta do Altar Lighthouse (''Farol da Ponta do Altar'') is located in the

Ferragudo Ferragudo is a Portuguese civil parish at the western border of the municipality of Lagoa. The population in 2011 was 1,973, in an area of 5.41 km². Ferragudo serves mainly as a bedroom community for its much larger neighbour, the city of Po ...

parish of the Lagoa municipality in the

Faro District Faro District ( pt, Distrito de Faro ) is the southernmost district of Portugal, coincident with the Algarve region. The administrative centre, or district capital, is the city of Faro. Municipalities The district is composed of 16 municipalit ...

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

. The lighthouse, of unusual design, consists of a small square turret attached to a one-story caretaker's house. It supports a red lantern on its terrace. The house, often compared with the appearance of a small schoolhouse, is painted white, with exposed stones and a red tiled roof. It is located on a promontory, used since prehistory for pagan rituals, on the eastern side of the entrance to the port of

Portimão Portimão () is a city and a municipality in the district of Faro, in the Algarve region of southern Portugal. The population in 2011 was 55,614, in an area of 182.06 km2. It was formerly known as Vila Nova de Portimão (). In 1924, it was ...

, about 7 km south-west of Lagoa. In recent years the attractiveness of the site has been impacted by the construction of a tall, cylindrical grey concrete communications tower, which dwarfs the lighthouse. The Ponta do Altar Lighthouse was first proposed by Ricardo Peyroteu on June 21, 1884. It started operations of 1 January 1893. The tower is 10 meters high and 2.7 meters wide. The original light was white and used oil as the fuel source. It combined with two smaller lights at the ends of the two moles at the entrance to Portimão harbour. In 1948, the light was changed to a red one with a range of 10 nautical miles. In 1954, the energy power was converted to acetylene gas and in 1976 the lighthouse was electrified, although gas was still used for the light until 1983. In 1992, the Ponta do Altar lighthouse was automated, using a system supplied by the Gisman company, being then controlled by the Lighthouse of Cabo de São Vicente near Sagres. In 2001, the colour of the light was changed back to white, with a range of 16 nautical miles. It uses a fifth-order

Fresnel Augustin-Jean Fresnel (10 May 1788 – 14 July 1827) was a French civil engineer and physicist whose research in optics led to the almost unanimous acceptance of the wave theory of light, excluding any remnant of Newton's corpuscular the ...

lens.

Visits

The lighthouse is accessible by road. It can be visited on Wednesdays between 14.00 and 17.00. Guided tours are on the hour.

References

* {{Authority control Lighthouses in Portugal Lighthouses completed in 1893 Buildings and structures in Faro District

Visits

See also

References