Ristna Lighthouse: Eiffel’s Hidden Legacy on Hiiumaa

The Ristna Cape has been stormy and dangerous, but for 150 years the lighthouse there has kept sailors safe and guided the people of Hiiumaa home. The story of this tower is special – it was not created by the hands of local masters, but in Paris, in Gustave Eiffel’s factory. There the parts were made, which were brought by sea and assembled in Ristna.

The Eiffel Tower was completed in 1889 for the Paris World Exhibition (Exposition Universelle), which marked the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution.

The construction lasted only 2 years, 2 months and 5 days – it began in January 1887 and ended in March 1889. Architect Gustave Eiffel (more precisely, his engineering office) designed the tower, which immediately received both admiration and criticism.

The Ristna Lighthouse, however, was already completed in 1874 – thus 15 years before the Eiffel Tower. And this fact is often used as a telling reference: Ristna was in a way a “prelude” to Eiffel’s later world-famous creation.

Eiffel’s early creation later became an inspiration for his masterpiece – the Eiffel Tower in Paris. While the metal spiral staircases and lattices in Eiffel’s famous tower have by now partially disappeared, in Ristna they still stand – with their decorations, with their mysterious form.

The Ristna tower has seen wars. In the First World War, German ships fired hundreds of shells at it, but the tower remained firmly standing. Later it was covered with a concrete shell that hid the iron beauty, yet inside and up in the gallery the details are still visible – like a seal from history.

When coming to Estonia by sea, Ristna’s light is the first gate to home. It is a navigational mark and an emotional border – the moment when the foreign sea becomes familiar and the traveler knows that they have arrived home.

And even though a year later the Tahkuna Lighthouse – elegant and tall and white – was erected at the northern tip of the island, Ristna will always remain the western guard of Hiiumaa, who greets the newcomer first.