France (officially the French Republic, République française) has coasts facing south on the Mediterranean Sea, west on the open Atlantic Ocean, and north on the English Channel (La Manche in French). Long a leader in lighthouse design, France has scores of famous and historic lighthouses. And it was a French engineer and physicist, Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788-1837), who invented the powerful and beautiful lenses used in lighthouses around the world. For local government mainland France is divided into 94 departments (départements), which are grouped for administrative purposes into 12 regions (régions). This page lists lighthouses of the département of Bouches-du-Rhône (Mouths of the Rhône) on the Mediterranean coast of France. The western part of Bouches-du-Rhône includes most of the Rhône delta, a vast wetland known as the Camargue. The eastern part of the département includes the city of Marseille, France's second largest city (after Paris) and largest commercial port. Bouches-du-Rhône was part of the historic province of Provence and is now included in the region called Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (Région Sud for short). The French word for a lighthouse, phare, is often reserved for the larger coastal lighthouses; a smaller light or harbor light is called a feu (literally "fire," but here meaning "light") or a balise (beacon). The front light of a range (alignement) is the feu antérieur and the rear light is the feu postérieur. In French île is an island, cap is a cape, pointe is a promontory or point of land, roche is a rock, récife is a reef, baie is a bay, estuaire is an estuary or inlet, détroit is a strait, rivière is a river, and havre is a harbor. Aids to navigation in France are maintained by the Bureau des Phares et Balises, an agency of the Direction des Affaires Maritimes (Directorate of Maritime Affairs). The Directorate has four regional offices (called Directions Interrégionale de la Mer, or DIRM) at Le Havre, Nantes, Bordeaux, and Marseille. Mediterranean lighthouses fall under the Marseille office, DIRM Méditerranée. ARLHS numbers are from the ARLHS World List of Lights. FR numbers, where available, are the French light list numbers. Admiralty numbers are from volume E of the Admiralty List of Lights & Fog Signals. U.S. NGA List numbers are from Publication 113.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Information available on lost lighthouses:
Notable faux lighthouses:
Adjoining pages: East: Le Var | West: Languedoc-Roussillon
Return to the Lighthouse Directory index | Ratings key
Posted April 3, 2006. Checked and revised May 4, 2024. Lighthouses: 33; lightships: 1. Site copyright 2024 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.