Cape Arkona Lighthouses, Light station complex in Putgarten, Germany.
The Cape Arkona Lighthouse comprises two brick towers and a radio navigation tower on Cape Arkona, at the northern tip of Rügen. The smaller Schinkel Tower is a three-storey square brick building, 22.45 m high, with an observation platform 15.55 m up. The larger tower, built 1901–02 to the same design as the Helgoland lighthouse, is 35 m tall and stands on an octagonal granite base.
The smaller Schinkel Tower was begun on 5 May 1826 and its light was first lit on 10 December 1827; it stayed in service until 1 April 1905. The larger brick tower on an octagonal granite base was built in 1901/02 and entered service on the same day in 1905. The former marine radio navigation tower followed in 1927.
The old lighthouse houses an outstation of the local registry office, and marriages held there are recorded on a small plaque set into the ground in front of the tower. The former marine radio navigation tower has been used since 2003 as the amber studio of Wiesbaden artist Nils Peters.
The new tower's platform, reached by 175 steps, stands about 28 metres up; the Schinkel Tower's platform is reached by 86 steps at 15.55 metres. In clear weather the view reaches the Danish island of Møn. The new tower's platform was closed from September 2025 for renovation costing around €700,000 and reopened on 23 June 2026.
The former marine radio tower, built of brick in 1927, has housed the amber studio of Wiesbaden artist Nils Peters since 2003. From 1911 to 1925, radio-wave trials for the Sassnitz–Trelleborg railway ferry were run from antenna fields inside the ramparts of the medieval Jaromarsburg; their foundations remain, though the tower's technical equipment was destroyed in 1945.
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