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 former region of Aquitaine, located on the southwestern coast of France and including the three coastal départements of Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Landes, and Gironde. In 2016 the former regions of Aquitaine, Limousin, and Poitou-Charentes were merged to form the region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine (New Aquitaine). Aquitaine faces west on the Atlantic, or more specifically the broad bight of the Atlantic known as the Bay of Biscay in English and the Golfe de Gascogne (Gulf of Gascony) in French. The northern end of Aquitaine borders the Gironde estuary, a major shipping route leading to the port of Bordeaux. South of the Gironde the French coast is mostly low, straight, and sandy, so the lighthouses tend to be tall but widely separated. The famous resort of Biarritz is at the southern end of the region, near the Spanish border. The Atlantic coastline of Aquitaine is often called the Côte d'Argent (Silver Coast). 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. Aquitaine lighthouses fall under the Bordeaux office, DIRM Sud-Atlantique. ARLHS numbers are from the ARLHS World List of Lights. Admiralty numbers are from volume D of the Admiralty List of Lights & Fog Signals. U.S. NGA List numbers are from Publication 113.
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Lighthouses of Pyrénées-Atlantiques
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Sémaphore de l'Adour, Bayonne, September 2009 ex-Panoramio Creative Commons photo by nicolapin |
Lighthouses of Landes
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Estacade Sud (left) and Jetée Nord Lights, Capbreton, October 2016 Wikimedia public domain photo by Tangopaso |
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Lighthouses of Gironde
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Hourtin Light (Tour Nord), Hourtin, November 2006 Wikimedia Creative Commons photo by Georges Schultz |
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Pointe de Richard Light, Jau-Dignac et Loirac, August 2006 Flickr Creative Commons photo by Frédéric Bourset |
Information available on lost lighthouses:
Notable faux lighthouses:
Adjoining pages: North: Charente Coast | South: Spain: Basque Country
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Posted October 30, 2005. Checked and revised August 12, 2023. Lighthouses: 27. Site copyright 2023 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.