site.btaAugust 13, 2000: Newly Constructed Tower of Bulgaria's Second Oldest Lighthouse Is Unveiled

On August 13, 2000, the newly constructed lighthouse tower on Cape Galata was opened, the third since the lighthouse was unveiled in 1863. The lighthouse is located at the extreme point of Varna Bay and is the second oldest in Bulgaria, after the one in Shabla.

According to data of the Reference Bibliographic Information and Regional History of the Pencho Slaveykov Regional Library in Varna (on the Black Sea), after the Crimean War of 1853-1856, the French company Compagnie des Phares de l'Empire Ottomane won the right to build lighthouses in the Ottoman Empire. The Galata lighthouse was the second lighthouse built by the company, seven years after the first one in Shabla. The white octagonal stone tower with an observation point was unveiled on August 15, 1863. Its optics were of the sixth degree, with a permanent white light placed on the tower at a height of 50 metres above sea level. The lighthouse was visible at a distance of 12 miles from the horizon.

A small one-story building was constructed next to the tower to serve as the lighthouse keeper's dwelling.

With the commissioning of the new harbour in 1906, the Galata Lighthouse proved unsuitable for the navigational service of Varna Bay, so  it was reconstructed in 1908.

In August 1909, the Bulgarian State took over the care of the lighthouses on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast.

In 1912, a new reinforced concrete tower and beacon with an optical apparatus with a rotating mechanism was built a hundred metres south of the lighthouse. An entirely new lighthouse building was constructed with staff quarters and a 13-metre-high tower. The facilities were supplied by the Paris-based company Barbier Benard & Turenne. The new lighthouse was test-lit on December 20, 1913.

In the 1930s, all lighthouses on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast were modernized. The Galata lighthouse was electrified in 1932 and its optics, in 1938. Its mechanisms worked with astronomical precision. In bad weather a nautophone (sound fog alarm) of the German company Julius Pinch warned ships. 

In 1958, a Lorenz beacon was installed and two years later, a Soviet-made deviating beacon MRM-61. The old French optics worked until 1987, to be replaced by a Soviet-built optics with circular emission. The lantern compartment was also re-equipped.

As a result of the intensification of landslide processes in the area in the 1986-1998 period, the tower was destroyed and the lighthouse threatened, necessitating the construction of a new tower. It was unveiled on August 13, 2000.

The new lighthouse complex cost BGN 756,992, provided by the Permanent Commission for Population Protection in Disasters, Accidents and Catastrophes under the Council of Ministers. The main contractor of the project was the Sofia-based Transstroy Consortium AD, the main designer was Dobrin Efremov, and the construction within the maximum permissible technological time was the work of the builders from Transstroy - Varna, led by Eng. Ivan Nakev.

The lighthouse complex was officially put into operation on July 17, 2001. The beam of the new lighthouse is visible 18 miles out at sea. The lighthouse tower is 55-metres high and can withstand hurricane winds and earthquakes. State-of-the-art optics are used.