Fort Victoria is an 18th century fort. As part of the Historic and Artistic Heritage preservation programme, Fort Victoria has been restored in the Cupo district of the Old City of Melilla, Spain.

The goal of the restoration project, carried out by architect Ana Vinas, is to create new tour routes that will allow people to understand the history of the fort and its different changes, and to hear the story that the fort has to tell.

With the help of Javier Gorriz of DCI Lighting Design Studio, Ana Vinas aims to evoke subtle emotions in visitors, taking them through the senses to the past, transforming a run-down space into a new meeting point in the city.

At dusk, the meandering movement of light across the texture transports you into another era. Here, the light of a single candle is enough. Less is more in the new lighting design of Victoria Castle, which directs our attention to the most important facts while leading visitors on a visual and “magical” tour to experience the extraordinary charm of Victoria Castle.

The lighting project elegantly changes the face of the building, offering visitors different interpretations of the same space depending on whether it is day or night.

According to the designers, the lighting project for Victoria Castle was a huge challenge because it was not built to use artificial light sources. Their task was to make the light paint the protagonist on the surface, emphasizing the relief so that the user would perceive the lighting as an architectural element of the overall intervention.

The light shines gently on the road surface, and the carefully arranged lamps cleverly highlight details such as the muzzle of the cannon and the texture of the ground, as well as the rolling marks left by the cannon as it moves. Next to the newly installed balustrades, the designers carefully adjusted the positions of the various lamps to achieve an indirect lighting effect that does not rely on the practice of hiding the lamps in the original elements. In this way, they have succeeded in creating a lighting that is both aesthetically pleasing and functional, which not only provides the necessary safety and orientation functions, but also enhances the visual effects and sense of story of historical artifacts.

In the interior environment, the stairs are designed to be illuminated with subtle indirect lighting, which both ensures the safety of passage and avoids the discomfort of direct light, making the light source itself less conspicuous. On the other hand, the vaults are indirectly illuminated by specially designed metal light slots to protect the original walls. In addition, in a nod to the past, the space is equipped with uniquely designed candles with LED technology, which integrate control systems to create different scenes as needed.