The old lighthouse Carol I is located inside the harbor of Constanta, and is mounted in a tower of stone and has a height of 21,75 m above sea level.
It is decorated with bas-relief of KingCarol I, who on 27 September 1909 inaugurated the opening of Constanta port and a plaque with the inscription “Port of Constanta.”
In September 1909, the high lighthouse was built (white lighthouse) mounted in a stone tower and located at a height of 21.75 m above sea level.
The bas-relief of the King Carol Ist, was placed on the south façade and on the northern facade the Traian’s bas-relief, and on the Western side it was mounted the inscription: “Port Constanta – increased and defended by the sea waves under the reign of the King Carol the Ist“.
It was called the “Carol I”Lighthouse” and became one of the port Constanta symbols.
The first years of operation of the Carol I Lighthouse have coincided with a fulminant development of Constanta, under the baton of King, who managed to align Dobrogea to old Kingdom standards, territory between the Danube and the Sea after the territory between the Danube and the Sea entered within the borders of the country in 1878. Constanta in the early twentieth century was in a full process of modernization. After construction of the Cernavoda bridge by Anghel Saligny, he also created the plans of habor that would become the largest in the Black Sea. Inaugurated in 1909 by king himself Carol, the port modernity and changing Romanian vision and royal policy, the maritime potential of Constanta materializes by the construction of Carol I Lighthouse, the modern constructions of this of this kind of that time.
In 1913, the Carol Lighthouse was taking over the the baton from the old Far Genovese, which had to turn off the lights after more than half a century (1860-1913).
Constanta rebuilt and needed new symbols and Carol I Lighthouse was certainly one of them.
In the hot summer of 1914, when no soldier had not entered under arms, the Lighthous in port Constanța was guiding the the luxurious yacht and military vessels accompanying the tsar Nicolay the IInd on his first visit in Romania.
Just a year before this event that marked the history of Constanta, in late summer of 1913, when the Romanian troops were leaving victorious in Bulgaria in the second Balkan War, King Carol, looking to the south from the circular terrace of the, showed the young princesses Maria the newly conquered Quadrilateral. There she had to build her future Queen castle in 1927, one of the best known and most visited residence: Castle in Balchik.
In the middle of `30, the Carol Lighthouse had under its care over 142 hectares of platforms, 36 commercial berths, 3 military berths, 4 defensive dams, huge oil tanks and silos for grain.
It became inactive in 1961, teaching the baton of the Landing Lighthouse one of the most modern at the time, inaugurated in 1960, and White Lighthouse, located in the extreme pier enlarged and opened 12 years later in 1972.
In 1996 the Lighthouse rehabilitated and replicas of the effigies are put in place of those destroyed by the communists.
