Where to see the original light from Armenistis Lighthouse

The tower stands on a headland, but the piece that produced its historic light is in Mykonos Town. If you are interested in the island’s seafaring past, visit the Aegean Maritime Museum and Cape Armenistis as two parts of the same story. You can begin at either end.

Why did Mykonos need a lighthouse at Cape Armenistis?

The British steamship Volta ran aground on the northern coast in 1887. Eleven crew members died. In response, the Greek government commissioned a lighthouse for the cape, and it began operating in 1891. Look out from the headland and consider what the crew of an approaching ship needed from a light on this exposed part of the island.

What happened to the original lamp?

The lighthouse received an automated system in 1983. The Aegean Maritime Museum later obtained and restored the original optical mechanism. It is displayed in the museum garden in Chora. Look for the lenses as well as the lamps and pulleys. The parts together show just how much equipment a keeper once needed to produce a reliable signal from shore.

What else is worth seeing in the maritime museum?

Find the museum in Tria Pigadia, in a nineteenth-century Cycladic house. Inside, try comparing a ship model with a map and then with the much smaller images of ships on ancient coins. Each records a different kind of information about seafaring. Save time for the garden, where maritime tools and funerary monuments give the lighthouse machinery company.