Victory Lighthouse

1 hr

Victory Lighthouse (Faro della Vittoria) was designed and built on the hill Poggio di Gretta immediately after World War I had ended. The original idea for its construction is attributed to architect Arduio Berlam of Trieste and sculptor Giovanni Mayer. It was built as a homage to the Italian victory in World War I and to glorify the transition of the city to the Kingdom of Italy.
The lighthouse was erected on the site of the former Austrian fort Kressich, built for the defence of the city in the mid-19^th century. Its original base is no longer visible today because it was coated with white stone from Croatian Vrsar. The works on the lighthouse went on from 1923 to 1927. At the opening ceremony Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy, was present in person to lay emphasis on the exceptional symbolic value of the construction.
The lighthouse is about seventy metres high and is composed of a pedestal, a tall carved stone column-like tower and a lantern which illuminates the gulf and can be seen from the distance of 20 nm. On the top of the lantern stands a statue of Nike, the Winged Goddess of Victory, and sculptor Giovanni Mayer attached a statue of a seaman on a socle to the lower part of the tower. Still lower we can see the anchor of the destroyer Audace—the first Italian vessel to land in Trieste/Trst, which happened on 3 November 1918, two days after the Austro-Hungarian governor left it—and a verse of the Italian irredentist poet Gabrielle D’Anunzio: Splendi e ricorda i Caduti sul mare MCMXV–MCMXVIII (Shine and commemorate the fallen on the sea 1915–1918).

Photos: (1) Marco Milani, PromoTurismoFVG; (2) Fabrice Gallina, PromoTurismoFVG; (3, 4) Schirra/Giraldi, PromoTurismoFVG