Cape Ai-Todor is the extreme land point of Mount Mogabi, sep­a­rat­ing the Yal­ta and Gasprin­sky bays. In the 2nd-3rd cen­turies AD there was a Roman urban set­tle­ment here, and lat­er the monastery of St. Theodore Tiron, who gave the name to the entire cape. Men­tions of this monastery are found on Genoese maps of the 14th-16th cen­turies. In addi­tion, the exis­tence of ancient Roman build­ings is evi­denced by finds from the exca­va­tions of Count Shu­val­ov in 1849. Then water pipes with a swim­ming pool and a mar­ble stat­ue were found.
In 1835, on the ini­tia­tive of Vice Admi­ral M.P. Lazarev, a nav­i­ga­tor, explor­er and com­­man­der-in-chief of the Black Sea Fleet, a new light­house was installed on the site of the old Roman sig­nal tow­er.
In 1876, the light­house was rebuilt again — in place of the old one, a new octag­o­nal stone tow­er with a lantern struc­ture of cir­cu­lar glaz­ing arose. Ai-Todor­­sky is the only light­house in Rus­sia dec­o­rat­ed with dia­­mond-shaped glass made in Eng­land.
The light­house sur­vived three wars: the Crimean War of 1854–1855, the Russ­ian-Turk­ish War of 1877 and the Great Patri­ot­ic War of 1941 — 1944. In 1947–1948, the tow­er, res­i­den­tial build­ing and light­house ser­vices were restored and repaired, and in the 1950s a mod­ern light-opti­­cal appa­ra­tus EMW was installed. 930, pro­vid­ing a bea­con fire range of 24 miles. In 1984, a KRM-300 radio bea­con with a range of 150 miles was installed in a tech­ni­cal build­ing near the light­house. At the same time, a muse­um ded­i­cat­ed to mar­itime themes was opened at the light­house.
Near the walls of the light­house, in addi­tion to juniper, olive and pis­ta­chio groves, there is a giant pis­ta­chio tree “Jus­tini­ana”, more than 1000 years old — one of the old­est in Crimea. This is a botan­i­cal nat­ur­al mon­u­ment, which is includ­ed in the Guin­ness Book of Records.
At the light­house there is a muse­um where ship lanterns are stored, some of which he brought from a round-the-world expe­di­tion, hydro­graph­ic maps, rare books, unique nav­i­ga­tion equip­ment and cap­sules with sea water brought from Antarc­ti­ca.