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 includes lighthouses of the Department of Var, part of the Côte d'Azur, France's southeastern coast, often called the French Riviera in English. Var 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). Var includes the famous resorts of the Saint-Tropez area as well as Toulon, France's major naval base on the Mediterranean. 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. |
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![]() New (left) and old Jetty Lights, Saint-Mandrier-sur-Mer photo copyright Capt. Peter Mosselberger; used by permission |
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![]() Cap Cépet Light, Saint-Mandrier-sur-Mer Ministère de la Culture photo |
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Information available on lost lighthouses:
Notable faux lighthouses:
Adjoining pages: East: Alpes-Maritimes | West: Marseille Area
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Posted April 7, 2006. Checked and revised April 27, 2024. Lighthouses: 27. Site copyright 2024 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.