The Lighthouses of Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu keeps one of the longest coastlines in India, a great curve of shore that runs down the Bay of Bengal, rounds the cape at Kanyakumari and turns up the Gulf of Mannar. For centuries that shore has been lit — by temple fires, by colonial-era towers and, today, by a chain of tall automated beacons that mariners still steer by. This guide walks the coast from the Marina in Chennai to the very tip of the peninsula, picking out the lighthouses you can actually visit and telling you when the doors are open.

A coast of beacons

A lighthouse marks a decision point — a headland to round, a shoal to avoid, a harbour mouth to find. Tamil Nadu’s coast has plenty of all three, and its beacons fall into a rough order down the map. The busy northern shore around Chennai carries the state’s tallest and most-visited light. The Coromandel middle, off the ancient port of Mamallapuram, keeps the oldest working tower still open to the public. Then the coast bends: at Point Calimere it turns west along the Palk Strait, and at Kanyakumari it turns the corner of India itself. Each turn has its beacon, and the deep-south fishing coast beyond — Muttom, Manapad and their neighbours — adds a scatter more.

The Madras lighthouse & the Marina

The Madras lighthouse stands at the southern end of Marina Beach, a red-and-white tower rising over the traffic where the seafront road meets the fishing quarter. It is the latest in a line: earlier Madras lights included a lantern raised on the old High Court building and a Doric column near the harbour, before the present tower opened in 1977. What makes it unusual is comfort — it is one of the very few lighthouses in India fitted with a lift, and it carries a public viewing gallery near the top. From up there the whole sweep of the Marina opens out, the widest urban beach in the country, with the Bay of Bengal on one side and the city’s spires on the other. It is the easiest lighthouse climb in the state, and for many visitors the first.

Mahabalipuram — an old light by the shore temples

An hour south down the coast road, the Mahabalipuram lighthouse sits on a rocky hill in the middle of the old Pallava port, a short walk from the rock-cut monuments. The present circular tower, built of dressed granite blocks, dates from 1887 and is open to visitors who don’t mind a stair. It shares its hilltop with the Olakkannesvara temple, a Pallava-era shrine that is said to have served as a fire-beacon in ancient times — so the hill has been guiding ships, in one form or another, for well over a thousand years. Climb the tower in the late afternoon and the view runs over the boulder-strewn town, the Shore Temple and the long line of the surf.

The southern lights — Point Calimere to Kanyakumari

Further south the coast quietens and the beacons grow lonelier. At the Point Calimere cape — Kodikkarai in Tamil — a banded tower stands where the Bay of Bengal meets the Palk Strait, deep inside a wildlife sanctuary of salt pans, lagoons and grazing blackbuck; the light guards the shallow, treacherous waters off the point. Round the tip of the peninsula and you reach Kanyakumari, where a lighthouse rises near the southern point above the meeting of three seas — a dramatic spot at both sunrise and sunset. West of the cape, along the deep-south fishing coast, smaller beacons watch over the rocks: the tower above Muttom Beach near Colachel, and the windswept Catholic fishing headland at Manapad on the Gulf of Mannar.

Climbing them & when to go

Under India’s lighthouse-tourism programme, many of these towers now open their doors to the public, usually for a few hours in the late afternoon and early evening and for a small ticket. Timings, weekly closing days and rules on cameras and drones vary from tower to tower and change without much notice, so treat any schedule as a guide and confirm locally before you set out. The best light for both the view and the photograph is the last hour or two before sunset, when the sea turns colour and the heat drops; the coast is at its kindest between roughly November and February, outside the worst of the summer glare and the north-east monsoon’s heaviest rain. Wear something you can climb a spiral stair in, carry water, and remember that a working lighthouse is exactly that — the gallery may close at short notice when the keepers need it.

Fit a lighthouse or two into a wider coastal run: our guide to the state’s shoreline at /india/tamil-nadu/guides/tamil-nadu-beaches maps the best sands from Chennai to the cape, and /india/tamil-nadu/guides/marina-beach-and-the-chennai-seafront covers the promenade beneath the Madras light in detail.