At the northern tip of Paxos, above the sheer cliffs that look across to Corfu, stands one of the most historic lighthouses of the Ionian. The first light was lit here in 1825, under British protection, burning olive oil behind fixed parabolic mirrors, and it guided ships through the channel between southern Corfu and Paxos. Its mechanism was improved twice, in 1887 and in 1890.
In 1885 the Archduke Ludwig Salvator climbed up to the old lighthouse and noticed a deep fissure in the ridge of the hill. He wrote that one day this piece of ground would fall away. The prediction came true 28 years later: at midday on 11 March 1913 the ground gave way and opened a chasm some 200 metres across, which swallowed the tower and the keepers’ house. The three keepers and their families survived because at that hour they were eating outside, under the trees.
Tradition holds that the icon of Agios Nikolaos from the lighthouse chapel was found days afterwards floating on the sea together with its oil lamp. It is kept today by the Lighthouse Service of the Hellenic Navy.
The new lighthouse was built in 1916 on safer ground, at the place called Kouero, and because of the First World War it was not lit until 1919. The square stone tower is about 11 metres tall and its light stands 64 metres above the sea. It went dark in the Second World War and was lit again in 1951, burning petroleum and manned by a keeper. Since 1979 it has run on electricity: three white flashes every 24 seconds, visible for 20 nautical miles. In 2012 it was declared a monument.
How to get there: on foot from Lakka, through the olive groves. The view at sunset and towards Corfu is among the finest on the island. The lighthouse opens to the public on International Lighthouse Day, usually in August.
