18 beautiful lighthouse cards – but there is a problem with Switzerland

At the beginning of the year, X users were excited “Terence Fosstodon” its data-loving followers with 3D maps of the countries of the world. Using the open source software Rayshader, he for once depicted not the topographical features, but rather the population density of the respective states.

The result was expected, but no less fascinating: the large cities and agglomerations stood out like steep mountain peaks from the ‘flat land’ consisting of mountains, forests, deserts, etc.

In the autumn, Fosstodon has now devoted itself to the next, no less fascinating project: he shows what countries would look like from space if they were only illuminated by their lighthouses.

Here too, the result is to be expected, but impressive in its simplicity and the information value it still contains. Finally, we get an idea of ​​how many lighthouses there are per country and how they are distributed – whether they are on the coast, on the river or on the lake.

Fosstodon also took Switzerland into account – at the request of an X user. Although there are one or two lighthouses in this country, the result is rather unspectacular. And it should have been even less spectacular, because Fosstodon based itself on an incorrect data source.

According to its own information, Fosstodon has combined its lighthouse locations for Switzerland based on data from the freely useful geodatabase OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia. So he came up with eleven lighthouses – more than twice as many as there are actually in Switzerland.

On OpenStreetMap, the storm warnings on the island of Altstatt near Meggen on Lake Lucerne, Badi Goldach on Lake Constance, Lochezen on Lake Walen, Neuenburg on Lake Neuchâtel and Unterseen on Lake Thun are also displayed as lighthouses.

The same applies to the mini lighthouse at the Leuchttürmli restaurant in Weggis on Lake Lucerne and the art project in Unterterzen on Lake Walen. There are only five real lighthouses in Switzerland.

The 15-meter-high lighthouse, named after the Les Pâquis district, has marked the entrance to the roadstead of the city of Geneva since 1894.

Opposite the Phare des Pâquis, on the same pier as the Jet d’Eau, the Phare des Eaux-Vives has stood since 1911. However, the octagonal side lighthouse contains only a simple lantern.

Two small towers mark the harbor entrance of Morges VD, 15 kilometers west of Lausanne on Lake Geneva. However, currently only the one on the north pier is considered a lighthouse.

At the end of the long harbor wall, the simple Rorschach lighthouse has stood since 1870: a metal structure, a staircase, a pulpit and the beacon – but that’s enough.

After 84 years of service, the old Romanshorn lighthouse was demolished in 1978 and replaced by a purely functional platform. However, the residents of the port city did not want to accept this: in the late 1980s, an initiative committee collected 35,000 francs for a faithful replica, which was unveiled in August 1989.

There is even a second, slightly older lighthouse on the Romanshorn harbor pier. The so-called “Hafenglöggli” is no longer used as such; only a storm warning system is still in operation.

In the Leuchttürmli restaurant in Weggis LU there is a mini version of a classic red and white striped lighthouse.

A red-and-white striped lighthouse was also erected in Unterterzen on Lake Walen. The art project previously stood at a viewpoint near Bad Ragaz.

The 10-meter-high Rheinquelle lighthouse was built in 2010 as part of a tourism project on the Oberalp Pass. It is a replica of the former sub-beacon “Hoek van Holland”, which marked the mouth of the Rhine in the North Sea for seventy years and has been on display in the Maritime Museum in Rotterdam since 1990.