A Coruña, the Roman lighthouse and the city of glass balconies

Most lighthouses are practical things, and a few are beautiful. The Tower of Hercules, on a headland at the edge of A Coruña, is something else again: a lighthouse the Romans built, probably at the end of the first century or the start of the second, which has been guiding ships into this harbour on and off ever since. Britannica calls it probably the only ancient Roman lighthouse still in use, and the city calls it simply the Tower. It is the symbol of A Coruña, and it is one of the reasons to come.

The Tower of Hercules

The tower stands about 55 metres high, and about 34 metres of that is the Roman core. The rest was added in the late eighteenth century, when the military architect Eustaquio Giannini restored it, raising it by some 21 metres and giving it a new lantern. So the tower you see is part eighteenth-century restoration wrapped around a Roman original. In 2009 it was inscribed as a World Heritage Site.

The name comes from legend, not from history; the tower is old enough to have collected stories about heroes and giants, and nobody need believe them. The headland it stands on, facing the Atlantic, is a good place to stand and listen to the wind.

The city of glass

The other image of A Coruña is its waterfront. Along the Avenida da Marina, facing the harbour, runs a long row of tall houses whose fronts are almost entirely glass. These are galerías, enclosed balconies of wood and glass, built mostly in the late nineteenth century, which let the people inside catch the sun and keep out the Atlantic wind and rain. Seen together, row upon row, they shine in the light like a cliff of windows, and they gave A Coruña its old label, the city of glass. They are at their best in the late afternoon, when the sun is low over the harbour and the whole front catches it.

The city also has a seafront promenade often described as the longest urban promenade in continental Europe, about thirteen kilometres of it, running past the beaches, the Tower and the harbour. Walking even a part of it, with the Atlantic on one side and the city on the other, is a good way to understand how much of A Coruña's life is lived facing the sea.

María Pita and Sir John Moore

A Coruña has two famous figures from its wars with the English, and it treats both of them well. The first is María Pita. In 1589 an English fleet under Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Norris attacked the city, and when the English broke through the walls of the old town, she is said to have seized a weapon and rallied the defenders. The details have grown in the telling, but she became the heroine of the city, and its main square, in front of the city hall, is named after her and has a statue of her in the middle.

The second is an Englishman, or rather a Scot. In January 1809, during the Peninsular War, a British army under Sir John Moore fought the French outside the city, and on 16 January, at the Battle of Corunna, near Elviña on the edge of the town, Moore was mortally wounded. He was buried in the city ramparts, in what is now the Garden of San Carlos, and the French commander, Marshal Soult, is said to have ordered that he be buried with honour. Charles Wolfe's poem, The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna, made the scene famous in Britain. His grave is still there, in the garden.

Cruises that call at A Coruña

Three cruises in the catalogue call at A Coruña, under its Spanish name of La Coruña.

Fred. Olsen's seven-night Regions of Northern Spain sails from Southampton in September, calling at Santander, Getxo, Gijon and La Coruña.

Ambassador Cruise Line's twelve-night Cultural Gems of the Iberian Peninsula & France sails from London Tilbury in July. Its ports and places include Plymouth, La Coruna and Santiago de Compostela, Leixoes and Lisbon, Getxo and Bilbao, and Le Verdon, Bordeaux and Honfleur. Santiago is about seventy kilometres from A Coruña by road.

Fred. Olsen's ten-night Cultures & Coasts of Northern Spain sails from Newcastle in August, with Getxo, Santander, Gijon and La Coruña on its itinerary.

With a day in port, go out to the Tower of Hercules first, before the day gets busy. Then walk back along the promenade to the Avenida da Marina, and look up at the glass.