Rumeli Lighthouse has thrown its beam across the water since 1856, when French engineers raised it during the Crimean War to guide allied fleets past the rough edge of the Black Sea. It stands at the northern mouth of the Bosphorus, on the last European headland before the strait opens into the sea. The fishing village of Rumelifeneri sits around it, and its people have always made their living from these currents. Just offshore lie the Cyanean Rocks, which ancient sailors knew as the Symplegades. In the tale of Jason and the Argonauts these were the clashing rocks that ground passing ships to splinters.
The village is as much of the experience as the tower. The ruined walls of an eighteenth-century Ottoman fort overlook the harbor, where fishing boats knock against the quay and the catch goes straight onto plain seafood tables. Follow the breakwater out and the water changes: the sheltered strait meets the Black Sea head-on, and the wind carries salt and the cries of gulls. The pale stone tower above it all still works, and its lamp sweeps the dark each night. On a calm morning the harbor is sleepy; when the north wind rises, waves break white over the mole, because this is the last sheltered water before the open sea.