Green Point Lighthouse, Maritime beacon at Green Point, South Africa

Green Point Lighthouse is an octagonal tower with broad diagonal red and white stripes, rising from a white flat-roofed base building. Its lamp room is a white-framed glass enclosure under a small domed roof with a thin antenna, set on a red cylindrical section. The tower's plastered walls have six arched windows with sill ledges, and a plaque above the entrance reads "1884".

Building began in 1821 under acting Cape governor Sir Rufane Shaw Donkin, to a design by German-born architect Herman Shutte, but Governor Lord Charles Somerset halted work because he had not been consulted. Completed in 1823 and first lit on 12 April 1824, it was the first solid lighthouse on the South African coast. It reached its present height in 1865 and was declared a provincial heritage site on 12 January 1973.

Residents of Green Point objected to the foghorn before it was fitted: a letter of complaint reached the Mayor of Cape Town in 1923, three years ahead of the 1926 installation. Their nickname for the lighthouse, "Moaning Minnie", comes from the sound the horn makes in winter fog. The tower also trained South Africa's first lighthouse keepers and is now hired out for conferences and wedding ceremonies.

The lighthouse is open to the public for an entrance fee and features on several Cape Town sightseeing tours. It stands on the rocky Mouille Point shore, where winter fog is common and the foghorn sounds; the tower is reached from the flat-roofed base building.

In its early years, the lighthouse used Argand lamps powered by sperm whale oil that could only be seen 6 nautical miles away. This primitive technology illustrates how much navigation methods have changed since then.