Many lighthouses were built around the Mediterranean and around the shores of their expanding empire, including the Tower of Hercules at A Coruña in northern Spain, a structure which still survives to this day.

* Tower of Hercules

Chronicle descriptions make it clear the decorations, carved and painted had martial iconography ; " The foregate of the same palace or place with great and mighty masonry by sight was arched, with a Tower on every side of the same portered by great craft, and inbatteled was the gate and Tower, and in the fenesters, and windows, were images resembling men of warre redie to cast great stones: also the same gate or Tower was set with compassed images of ancient Princes, as Hercules, Alexander and other, by entrayled worke, richly limned with gold and Albyn colours, .... also the tower of the Gate as seemed was built by great masonry, ... for the sundrie countenances of every Image that their appeared, some shooting, some casting, some ready to strike, and firing of gonnes, which shewed very honourably.

One of them, Breogán, built a tower at a place called Brigantia ( probably in the coast of Galicia, near A Coruña ( Corunna ), which was then " Brigantia " ( today Betanzos ) and where a Celtic tribe called " Brigantes " is attested in ancient times — see Tower of Hercules ) from the top of which he, or his son Íth, first saw Ireland.

Tower of Hercules ( A Coruña, Galicia ( Spain ) | Galicia ) rebuilt 2nd and 18th centuries: According to the Lebor Gabála Érenn, Breogán was the father of Ith, the leader of an expedition to Ireland from the Iberian Peninsula ; from Breogán's Tower Ith first saw Ireland, 900 kilometres north

*** Tower of Hercules

A large statue of Breogán has been erected near the Tower of Hercules.

The Tower of Hercules ( Galician and Spanish: Torre de Hércules ) is an ancient Roman lighthouse on a peninsula about from the centre of A Coruña, Galicia, in north-western Spain.

The Tower of Hercules is a National Monument of Spain, and since June 27, 2009, has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

* Tower of Hercules, an ancient Roman lighthouse at A Coruña, Galicia, Spain

# Redirect Tower of Hercules

Tower of Hercules.

They also built many lighthouses, such as the Tower of Hercules in northern Spain, which survives to this day as a working building, and the equally famous lighthouse at Dover Castle, which survives to about half its original height as a ruin.

Tower of Hercules, a Roman lighthouse at La Coruna modelled on the Lighthouse of Alexandria | Pharos

A famous example is the Tower of Hercules in A Coruña, Spain, and there is another at Dover, England which still stands to about half its original height.

The intact Tower of Hercules at A Coruña and the ruins of the Dover lighthouse give insight into construction ; other evidence about lighthouses exists in of depictions on coins and mosaics, of which many represent the lighthouse at Ostia.

# Redirect Tower of Hercules