Torre dell'Orologio
We took a behind the scenes tour to see the workings of the clock tower that is on St Mark's Square. It was pretty incredible. We had fun learning about the history of the clock 500 years ago until now. It was built in 1493 to bring people or to have something for the Doge to have reason to state that he had something amazing on this side of the world...as Columbus had just recently come to America. The clock tower has two faces, one facing the plaza and one the streets. The more elaborate one facing the plaza has a dial with 24 roman numerals for the time, the month, the zodiac, the phases of the moon. (this was important for those coming in on boat could use a telescope to see the moon and know if the tide would be high or low). At the top is a lion (the sign of Venice) below it is Mary and baby Jesus. The church came second in Venice. Next to the statue of Mary now resides the first digital clock. It use to have three wisemen that would come out every hour. Now they are put back on the tracks to rotate out on Ephiphany (January 6) and Easter. The back clock only has a dial that tells the hour.
The gears.
The man that originally built the clock lived inside it. Every 12 hours the weights had to be raised to keep it going. This job was handed down from family to family until 150 years ago when it was converted to a mechanical mechanism. Where these weights are use to be the living room. The original weights were down the walls.
Looking out the window to the street.
These two circle windows are the upper windows around the face of the clock on the outside.
The digital clock now and the track where the wisemen are added twice a year. A man manually cranks them out every hour from 8am -8 pm those two days.
The statues. They actually bend when they pass Mary. Oh and an angel.
View from the top.
The men that hit the bell. The one on the left hits it four min before the hour then the one on the right hits in on the hour.
