With an official ceremony to inaugurate its renovated lighthouse, the town of Shabla is marking International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend.

• The Shabla Lighthouse mysteries
  

The Shabla lighthouse rises on the Easternmost point of Bulgaria, and is the country’s oldest Black Sea lighthouse. It is 32 metres high and warns incoming ships to avoid the shallows between Cape Shabla and the nearby fishing village Tyulenovo. Historians say there may have been a functioning lighthouse here as far back as Roman times.

A special ceremony took place in Shabla today for handing over the post of head of the hydrographic office. The hydrographic office is the only service in the country preparing and broadcasting navigation news to ships and running the system of coastal and seaborne warning facilities, including the seven principal lighthouses along Bulgaria’s Black Sea coastline.