Rozewie Lighthouse

The light at Rozewie went into service in 1822 and has been working ever since, which makes it the oldest operating lighthouse on the Polish coast. It stands back from the edge on a wooded cliff, so the tower is shorter than you expect and the height comes from the land. A second tower on the same site was taken out of service and now carries other equipment. Inside the working tower, a museum of lighthouse keeping fills the rooms below the lantern with lenses, lamps and charts, and the stair continues up to a gallery looking out over the Baltic. The cape was long taken to be the northernmost point of the country.

History

The lighthouse was built in 1822 after a year of construction, first with a lamp burning rapeseed oil; a Fresnel apparatus, also oil-fired, replaced it in 1866, and ten years later came a kerosene lamp. The writer Stefan Żeromski worked on his novel The Wind from the Sea while staying at the lighthouse, and today the tower is 33 metres high, with a range of 26 nautical miles (Wikipedia, Rozewie Lighthouse).

What's there

• The lantern gallery - the walk-around platform under the lamp, with open sea to the horizon.
• The keeping museum - lenses, lamps, foghorn parts and charts in the tower rooms.
• The second tower - the decommissioned light standing beside the working one.
• The cliff path - the wooded slope down to a stony beach below the cape.

When to go

May to September, when the tower keeps daily hours; opening is shortened or suspended in winter and in strong wind. Mid-morning gives the clearest view along the coast. August brings families in numbers from the nearby resorts, and the stair is single file. Autumn storms are dramatic from the cliff path but the beach below is then closed.

Practical notes

It is a short visit, perhaps forty minutes, and the museum captions are largely in Polish. The tower stair is narrow and steep with no lift. The view is open sea and forest rather than a picturesque coastline, and on a grey day it is simply grey. Parking nearby is paid and fills quickly through the summer.

Nearby

The beaches at Jastrzebia Gora, the fishing villages of the Hel peninsula and the smokehouses along it.

Key facts