Cape Arkona Lighthouse

The Cape Arkona Lighthouse refers to two lighthouses and a radio navigation tower on the German Baltic Sea coast in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern with the international serial number C 1062. It is located on Cape Arkona on the peninsula of Wittow on the northern tip of the island of Rügen.All three towers were renovated in the early 1990s and are open to visitors. In the old lighthouse is a museum with an exhibition on lighthouses and maritime rescue as well as an outstation of the local registry office. Here marriages may be commemorated on a small plaque in front of the tower. The radio navigation tower is used as an art museum and studio. On each tower is an observation platform, from where there are unimpeded views over the island of Rügen, especially the Wittow peninsula. In fine weather the Danish island of Møn may be made out.Schinkel TowerThe smaller of the two lighthouses was built of brick in 1826/27, to plans by the Prussian Main Construction Agency . The design is usually attributed to Karl Friedrich Schinkel, based mainly on a catalogue of drawings produced in 1863 by Schinkel's son-in-law, Alfred von Wolzogen.Schinkel was not mentioned, however, in a document published in 1828 on the "Construction Designs of the Prussian State", in which town planner, August Adolph Günther, cites the lighthouse as a "design by the Royal Main Construction Agency." Signatures on two drawings of the lighthouse were, on the one hand interpreted as evidence of Schinkel's authorship and, on the other, as no more than a simple administrative internal check note. No statements are known by Schinkel himself, who first viewed the tower in 1835, of his own participation in the construction of the tower. On the other hand, a contemporary, the Berliner engraver Johann Friedrich Rosmäsler, in his 1834 book, Preußen in landschaftlichen Darstellungen calls Schinkel the originator of the design. Rosmäsler produced a steel engraving of the lighthouse .