Faro Voltiano

This guide to the Faro Voltiano above Lake Como opens with a priest's odd proposal at an 1899 telegraph convention: turn his orphanage's bell tower into a lighthouse aimed at the tomb of the scientist Alessandro Volta. It follows the bishop who dismissed the idea, the argument that split two future giants of Italian Catholic life, and the wooden test tower that went up and came straight back down. The idea sat unbuilt for nearly three decades before the Post and Telegraph Association picked it up again.