The Costa Concordia rests on its side on the morning of January 14, 2012 (click for larger photo)

Yes, it is a photo of the Costa Concordia aground on the rocks but did anyone notice the lighthouse in the photo under which the lifeboats are all clustered?

It is one of two lights guarding the entrance to the harbour for the town of Giglio Porto (Port of of the island of Giglio) in Italy. One light is red (port-hand light) and the other is green (starboard-hand light) as can be seen in the photo below.

The following photo shows the location of the lights in relation to the harbour. When returning to the harbour all skippers would keep the red on the left hand and the green on the right hand. Seems simple in the daytime, but try it in the dark when returning home drunk after a day of fruitless (fishless?) fishing! 🙂

Of course, the Captain of the Costa Concordia did not have to worry about these two small lights – he had more major problems, like a sinking ship, and he would not have have got into this harbour anyways!

 The two harbour lights (bottom right in the photo).

As can be seen on the marine chart below of the island of Giglio, Italy, there are four (4) lights on the island. Look for the RED exclamation marks top and bottom and the two on the harbour of Giglio on the extreme right.

As someone will remark, these are not actually lighthouses, but like the early unmanned lights in Canada, they had to be tended daily by a human who lit and extinguished them. Now they are electrified and automated.  They are usually referred to as breakwater, jetty, or harbour lights, but interesting nevertheless because of their shape, size, and colours, and the incident that happened there off the Island of Giglio, Italy. 

From this Boat Design webpage the above photo and the following comment comes:

. . . they are called jetty lights in English, I didn’t know that. In italian they are called “fanali” if their range is under 10 NM and “fari” if above 10 NM range. So, technically speaking as you say, there are two jetty lights at the port entrance and two lighthouses at the extreme north/south points of the island.

And the Google Map below shows where the island is located: