Inside Venice’s Clock Tower

You may know this about me already, but I have a thing for towers.  Bell towers, clock towers, castle towers – you name it.  So when I was planning my trip to Venice and discovered there’s a tour inside the Torre dell’Orologio, I had to go!

 

I booked it online through VivaTicket and my voucher said to exchange it for a ticket one hour before the tour start time.  Easy, right? 

 

Finding the ticket office for the Bell Tower, though, was not.  I knocked on the tiny, narrow door right below it and got no answer.  I asked at the Doge’s Palace and at the Campanile ticket offices and they didn’t know where to send me.  I decided to try my broken Italian to ask a street vendor if he might know and he answered me in very broken English, “Maybe… try… Museo Correr?”

Museo Correr is at the opposite end of Piazza San Marco from where we were in front of the clock tower.  With five minutes till the start of the tour I all but ran there, climbed the vast marble stairs and bounded into the lobby, panting, knowing that if this wasn’t the place there was no way I’d be able to find the right place in time.  Ten people with green stickers on their chests stopped talking when I leaped in the room, but when I presented my voucher to the woman behind the desk she gave me a green sticker, too, and told me to wait.  Grazie a Dio!

 

Right behind me a petite redhead in a bubble jacket raced in, also panting (I didn’t feel so bad, then).  She smiled at us all broadly and introduced herself as Genny, our tour guide, and, with a secret in her eyes that reminded me slightly of Gene Wilder in “Charlie & the Chocolate Factory”, invited us with a thick Italian accent to follow her back across the square.

 

Torre dell’Orologio is the second most prestigious clock tower in the world, according to Genny, and was the facade for the world’s first “digital” clock. At the top of the tower is the Winged Lion of Venice and at the bottom is a clock face that tells not only the minute and hour, but also the day, month, phase of the moon and current zodiac.  To those who know how to read it, that is.

 

And the windows on either side of the clock tower? Those are privately owned apartments that are rented out during the year! Can you imagine?!

 

Genny took out a key and we walked through the narrow door under the tower and up a spiral staircase to a platform directly behind the clock face. The clock was completed in 1499, at which point the designer of the clock became the “timekeeper” and took up residence inside the clock tower! In order to keep the time, the timekeeper had to pull hanging weights at various intervals to reset the clock.  His descendants followed in his footsteps, until 1999 when the clock was reworked to be automatic.  For those 500 years, though, the timekeeper and his family’s living room was on the platform where we were standing – weights hanging right in the middle!

 

From their bedroom on the next level of the clock tower, where the “digital clock” now sits, four figurines used to parade in a wide circle twice a day.  The track is still there, even though they now only do the procession twice a year (on the Feast of the Epiphany and 40 days after Easter).  During the procession, the three wise men follow an angel who is blowing a trumpet, moving outside past the statue of the Virgin Mary that is attached to the facade, and back inside in a smooth – albeit slow – circle.

 

The twice-daily procession was stopped to make way for the “digital clock” in 1855, but it’s not exactly what I think of when I think of a “digital” clock. Roman numerals tell the hour, 1 through 12, and modern numbers counting by fives tell the minute (or, the last five-minute mark).

 

The last stop on the tour was the roof of the clock tower, which lends an amazing view of St. Mark’s Square as well as the real stars of the clock tower: the famous Moors.  The Old Moor (who has a beard, as opposed to the “New” Moor who is clean-shaven) hits the bell with his long-staved hammer two minutes before every hour in honor of “time past”.  The New Moor, on the other side, rings the bell two minutes after every hour for “time to come”.  The Moors aren’t wearing any pants, something Genny pointed out several times adding, “Now, ladies, don’t get any ideas! Though they are pretty cute…”

 

Floating between the Moors are two hammers jointly called the “meridian”.  At five minutes before noon and five minutes before midnight the hammers begin striking six sets of 22 blows. After she explained the 132 chimes of the meridian in the middle of the day and night, those apartments right next to the clock seemed a little less desirable.

 

Before we climbed back down the narrow staircase to exit the tour, Genny told us the Moors were getting tired and asked if any of us would like to volunteer to take their place.  I asked if we would be allowed to wear pants.

 

St. Mark’s Square is filled with so many interesting and historical sites but the tour of Torre dell’Orologio seems a bit overlooked.  It’s relatively short, fun and easy (after finding the meeting point), with a small group of tourists and a personable guide who lets you in on some interesting facts and stories about the famous clock tower.   I’d definitely recommend it!

 

Jessica is a travel enthusiast and entertainment executive living in Los Angeles. Her independent travels through Italy have inspired her travel blog, OneDayInItaly.com