Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Baziège Lighthouse, built around 1925 or 1932, is part of the network of light beacons installed in the 1920s to guide Latécoère aircraft. This network, nicknamed "night flight", linked Toulouse-Montaudran to Africa and South America, marking a revolution in postal air transport. Located on the Toulouse-Narbonne axis, this concrete lighthouse served as a landmark for pioneers like Mermoz, Saint-Exupéry or Guillaumet, before becoming a rare vestige of pre-war air navigation techniques.

This monument embodies a pivotal period of aeronautics, where pilots depended on luminous markers to cross the night. With the Second World War, this method became obsolete, but the Baziège lighthouse, one of the three still preserved in the former Midi-Pyrénées, bears witness to the audacity of the first commercial airlines. Its inscription in the Historical Monuments in 2010 highlights its key role in the technical and human history of aviation, as well as its anchoring in the Toulouse industrial heritage.

Owned by the municipality of Baziège, the lighthouse is located on Rue de l'Aéropostale, a toponym that recalls its link with this epic. Although most of the lighthouses in the region have disappeared or are degraded, it offers a priori satisfactory historical and geographical accuracy (level 6/10), depending on available sources. Its state of conservation makes it a material milestone in the beginnings of civil aviation, between technical memory and legend of pioneers.

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