The Lanterna, Genoa's light

The first tower on the cape west of the old port went up, by most accounts, around 1128; at least one source says 1161. Bundles of dry heather were burned at the top, and ships coming in paid a tax for the fire.

In 1326 the fire gave way to lamps burning olive oil. In 1449 one of the keepers was Antonio Colombo, uncle of Christopher Columbus.

In 1528 the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria attacked the harbour, then held by the French, and won the city back; the tower was badly damaged in the fighting. It was rebuilt in 1543 in the shape it still has: two square sections of stone, each with a terrace, and the lantern on top. The liner named after the admiral four centuries later is in this Journal too.

It is the tallest lighthouse in the Mediterranean, and it was the tallest in the world until 1902, when the light on Île Vierge, in Brittany, rose above it.

In 1840 it was fitted with a rotating Fresnel lens, first lit in January 1841. It is still in service. The hill it stood on was cut away in the 1920s to make room for the port, and the Lanterna now stands on the last piece of rock that was left.