Farum Brigantium

Listen to the wind, it carries whispers across millenia...

A Coruña’s oldest landmark is the Tower of Hercules, a lighthouse built in Roman times whose beginnings are shrouded in the affinities and contradictions of most origin stories. Some say that under the current structure lays an older one that originates in the time of Breogán, the Celtic king whose son sailed off to Ireland to settle that far off isle, which he was able to spot from the tower his father built (seems unlikely, I climbed the tower, taller now than when it was first built, and I did not see Ireland). The most famous version of the legend comes later and tells of Hercules battling and eventually killing the tyrant giant Xerión (Geryon in English, but I can’t pass up the x-initial name in Galician). The story goes that it took 3 days of non-stop, unclothed, wrestling-style fighting for Hercules to finally vanquish the giant, beheading him and placing his bones and his crown at the base of the tower he ordered built, possibly over the site of Breogán’s original. There’s lots of information about the architecture, history of renovations, and the continuous function of the structure as a lighthouse for almost 2000 years, but what drew me most when I visited was the palpable energy inside it. You start through the foundation, a cavernous space littered with Roman stone artifacts, surfacing at the base of an internal staircase. Two thousand years. The air is different there, it carries the compounded human histories of the slaves who most likely built it, of the engineers who designed and supervised its construction and multiple renovations, of the accumulated throngs of visitors over the centuries, myself among them. It’s a long climb, but not arduous. The stone steps and walls show the uneven weathering of uncountable hands and feet. The view from the intermittent windows opens to an ever higher vantage of the Atlantic. On the lookout terrace at the top, the same wind that has been blowing since the tower’s beginnings buffets all around me. One more thing about this tower, although it’s pretty far, it’s visible from our bedroom window, and all night its cycling light bathes us as we sleep, a sentinel from the ages watching over us in our new home.

Photo credits: Michael Pierce and Lupe Fisch. Top photo: Stone statue of Breogán at the foot of the Tower of Hercules, visible behind it. Collage clockwise from top left: The Tower viewed from the ramp, as seen from the stone park that surrounds the Tower, wood carving depicting the death of Xerión at the hands of Hercules and based on drawing from Galician artist José Ramón, view of the Atlantic from the top of the Tower, interior stair well of the Tower.