Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The Gatteville Lighthouse, located at the point of Barfleur on the town of Gatteville-le-Phare (Manche, Normandy), was built to secure a dreaded maritime area, marked by strong currents and numerous shipwrecks, including the famous Blanche-Nef. Vauban had already stressed in 1633-1707 the need for a lighthouse at this site, qualifying the capes of Barfleur and the Hague as "the horror of seafarers" because of the ships lost each year.

In 1774, the Chamber of Commerce of Rouen entrusted the entrepreneur Jacques-Martin Maurice with the construction of a first 25 metre granite lighthouse, lit in 1775 with a wood and coal fire. This inefficient system was replaced in 1780 by 16 oil lamps in a glass lantern. In 1825, facing the lack of this tower to accommodate modern lenses, the engineer Charles-Félix Morice de la Rue designed a new lighthouse of 74.85 meters, completed in 1835. This rose granite giant, second highest in France, was electrified in 1893 and automated in 1984.

The former lighthouse, transformed into a semaphore in 1860, was equipped in 2001 with a panoramic room to monitor maritime traffic. Both buildings, protected from historical monuments since 2009, symbolize the evolution of maritime lighting techniques and the adaptation of infrastructure to security needs. The site, open to the public, attracts 35,000 to 39,000 visitors annually, closing only by violent wind or storm.

The Gatteville lighthouse is distinguished by its 365 steps, evoking the days of the year, and its 52 windows, like the weeks. Its double optics, with a range of 29 miles, and its mercury tank (1903) illustrate the technical innovations of the era. The semaphore, which is still active, employs nine watchdogs who provide continuous monitoring, thus perpetuating a mission of more than two centuries.

Culturally, the lighthouse was used as a setting for Jean-Jacques Beineix's film Diva (1980). His history also reflects the economic and strategic stakes of the Normandy maritime, between the Rouennais trade, innovations of the Ponts and Chaussées, and the memory of shipwrecks, such as that of the Blanche-Nef in 1120, although the latter is not detailed in the sources.

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