Patara Lighthouse opens for night visits

Night photo: Bekir Bektaş @Anadolu Ajansı

Approximately 26-meter-long lighthouse, which collapsed as a result of natural disasters, had thousands of stones unearthed during excavations around it. These stones were meticulously processed in the stone hospital established in the area after the prepared project and then placed on the tower. Restitution work was completed on the tower, which rises on a 4-meter-high podium of the lighthouse built by Roman Emperor Nero for Lycian Governor Sextus Marcus Priscus and features an inscription with the phrase 'I am Emperor Nero. 'I built this lighthouse for the safety of sailors' (originally in golden letters), a dolphin relief, and a dome. The light of the lighthouse will symbolically shine again after many years, following the landscaping.

Dr. Şevket Aktaş, the head of the Patara Ancient City Excavation, who pays attention to the importance of preserving the original material of the structure, told AA correspondent, This structure, which comes to us from the ancient world and represents Emperor Nero, is a very special structure both in terms of its monument podium and its architecture. The lighthouse has a tower consisting of 2500 blocks on a monumental podium. It is a lighthouse that everyone would want to see.

Patara's Stone Hospital

In the restoration project prepared for the reconstruction of the Patara lighthouse using its original stone materials (restoration in its original state), a "stone hospital" was established on the site of the ruins to elevate the lighthouse with its original stone materials. This lighthouse was built as a prestige work by Roman Emperor Nero at the Patara Ancient City.

The lighthouse at Patara Ancient City, which served as the capital of the Lycian Union for many years and dates back 2,000 years, has a cylindrical body with a diameter of 6 meters and a height of 26 meters, consisting of 6 sections. It is believed that the Patara Lighthouse was destroyed in 1481 during the Rodos earthquake, due to the tremors and the resulting tsunami.

During the archaeological excavations around the structure in the form of a stone pile, 2,595 original building stones of the lighthouse were unearthed. The materials stacked here were first individually 3D modeled by restoration experts in the "stone hospital" under the coordination of Prof. Dr. Havva İşkan Işık (who was the Head of the Excavation Committee until 2025), and the stones were subjected to 3D optical scanning for earthquake simulation.

In the restoration, Işık explained that they created a stone hospital in the contractor's construction site, where the original stone material of the work is meticulously examined one by one. 'The Fener will almost rise stone by stone. Each original block to be restored to the structure will be laser scanned individually in this hospital, modeled in 3D. 3D prints of these models will be taken. After this scanning, the stones will be measured with special measuring instruments to determine their load-bearing capacity. We will check whether a stone in the first meter can carry a load of 26 meters. Stones with capillary cracks will be repaired and reinforced. The stones, after undergoing many tests and operations on them, will be put back in their places. Thus, we will have the opportunity to control our experiments and simulations, which we have already created in our restoration project, by obtaining the original blocks of the lantern like Lego stones. We will carry out these studies in the stone hospital' she had said.

Fracture and crack areas determined by ultrasound scanning were repaired by placing reinforcement material suitable for the static project. After the preparation of the lighthouse's 6-meter-high podium, the tower began to rise with stones lifted by cranes.

Patara Ancient City Former Excavation Director and Akdeniz University Faculty of Literature Archaeology Department Faculty Member Prof. Dr. Havva İşkan Işık, in her statement to the AA correspondent, explained that all the stone material from the first construction of the Lighthouse was excavated and numbered, saying, 'The lighthouse in Patara is not the first sea lighthouse in the world, but it will be the only lighthouse that can be restored with its original material.'

Source: AA