360° virtual tour of the Kythira semaphore telegraph, Cape Spathi

At Cape Spathi on the northern tip of Kythira, beside the Moudari lighthouse, a ruined building holds one of the most refined semaphore telegraph stations ever to operate in Greece.

Before wireless, ships were signalled by sight. A rotating mast carrying movable arms, operated from inside the building, formed configurations that mapped to letters and set phrases in a signal codebook, while five telescopes let the signalmen read messages across great distances. The passage between the Peloponnese and Kythira was among the busiest sea routes in the region, and this station was its voice.

Wireless telegraphy made it obsolete. War damage, looting and decay followed, and the monument was forgotten. In August 2017 the academician Manolis Korres came across the ruin by chance and recorded it in detailed drawings using improvised means. No documentation was found in either the Naval History Service or the Lighthouse Service archives. The building was effectively unrecorded. The research was presented to the Academy of Athens in October 2021.

What the tour shows:

• 38 panoramas, from aerial drone positions to the building's interior
• The digitally restored rooms: signal room, superintendent's quarters, dormitories, kitchen and dining room
• Manolis Korres' architectural drawings and the mechanics of the signalling mast
• Dual floorplans for drone and ground positions, narrated audio and related video

The digital reconstruction began in 2024 with the exterior of the building and continued with its interior, partly funded by the Greek Ministry of Culture under the "Creative Greece 2025 / Digital Culture" programme. 3D modelling was carried out by 3dMastroCraft and the enriched virtual tour by 360photographers, with Manolis Korres as scientific advisor. A digital repository is being built alongside it, covering the until-now undocumented technology and operation of semaphore telegraphs in Greece. The project's full digital museum is hosted at navalhistory.gr, with the long-term aim of rebuilding the structure itself.

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