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The Clock Tower is a Renaissance building located in Venice in Piazza San Marco, facing the northwestern corner of the Basilica. It was built between 1496 and 1499 and then subsequently enlarged in 1506 and 1757, until it reached its current shape. One of the best-known commercial streets in Venice branches off from its large arch, the Merceria dell'Orologio.
The history of the Clock Tower began in 1493 when the Senate of the
Serenissima decided to build a new public clock to replace the obsolete
one of S. Alipio which was located in a niche at the north-west corner
of the façade of S. Marco since from the XIII century. This clock was
rather simple as it had no dial, therefore the hours were not shown, but
were signaled acoustically by the tolling of a bell (mallet clock). The
new clock had to be equipped with automations and elaborate mechanisms
in order to reflect the Venetian State's interest in mechanical sciences
and show a society that was in step with the times. In essence, the new
clock was intended to be a monument to advanced engineering and
technology, in turn reflecting Venice's status as a world power. The
construction of the machine was entrusted to two well-known watchmakers
from Reggio Emilia: Giampaolo and Giancarlo Raineri (father and son) who
in 1481 had already made a similar clock for the municipal tower of the
city of Reggio.
As strange as it may seem, at the time of
commissioning the clock, the place where to erect the tower that was to
house it had not been defined. This decision dates back to November
1495, as indicated in the Registry of the Senate dated 3 November 1495,
in which it was decided to place the tower above the bocha de Marzaria,
i.e. where the Haberdashery opened into Piazza San Marco. This decision
was in some respects revolutionary and clearly indicated a precise
direction on the part of the government of the Republic. Revolutionary
in that it altered the consolidated appearance of the square, as
established at the time of Doge Sebastiano Ziani and characterized by
the series of arcades that delimited the perimeter. Furthermore, the
fact that the tower was located at the entrance to the main commercial
artery of the city, the Mercerie, meant that from then on it would
become one of the focal points of the city. This tower was entirely
devoid of the military defense function often seen in medieval towers.
The door with its large arch, on the other hand, announced itself as the
main link from the area of the shops and town houses to the area of the
Doge's Palace, the heart of Venetian domination.
Work began in
1496 with the demolition of the houses located at the entrance to the
Haberdashery and the laying of the foundations of the tower in June. In
1497 the building was completed and on 1 December the bell was installed
on the top of the tower, followed ten days later by the two bronze
statues of the Moors. The hands of the clocks and the rays, as well as
the Sun, the Moon, the stars and the signs of the zodiac were
fire-gilded. A Florentine named Giovanni then executed the polychrome
enamels, so that both quadrants were finished in August 1498. On 1
February 1499 the tower was inaugurated.
The construction of the
tower took place during the government of Agostino Barbarigo, who was
Doge of Venice from 1484 to 1501. In fact, his coat of arms decorates
the outside of the bell and a statue of the kneeling Doge was placed to
the right of the winged lion. His signature, also present in some
official documents of August 1496 and the fact that they highlight the
decision to place the clock above the outlet of the Haberdashery, show a
direct link between the work and the person of the Doge.
The
attribution of the tower project is highly controversial. Even in the
absence of documentary evidence, the project is generally attributed to
the architect Mauro Codussi above all because the architectural motifs
used, and in particular the respect for the so-called Albertian modules
of the elevation and the plan, are those typical of this designer.
In the years following the construction of the tower, criticisms were
expressed about it, above all because given its size it seemed that it
did not fit the size and magnificence of the square in which it was
located. Therefore, to improve integration of the building into the
square, a commission was appointed which had the task of evaluating
proposals for expansion and integration. Also in this case we do not
have certain data about the winner of this kind of competition.
According to some authors it was Pietro Lombardo who already performed
the functions of Proto of the palace. This project envisaged the lateral
expansion of the tower façade with the addition of two "wings" in the
same style. To make way for these wings, towards the end of the year
1500 the neighboring buildings, which had remained standing after the
addition of the tower, were demolished.
The works were started
between the end of 1502 and the beginning of 1503 and completed in 1506,
when the new wings of the building were inaugurated on Ascension Day.
In the year 1750 the clock was severely degraded: the astronomical
part and the procession of the Magi no longer worked and even the
striking of the hours did not occur regularly. In the past, maintenance
had been carried out, but now the situation required a complete overhaul
of the irreparably worn mechanism. On 6 September 1750, the rebuilding
of the machine was entrusted to two well-known mechanics: Bartolomeo
Ferracina from Solagna and Father Pietro Guarana from Venice, who each
had to produce their own solution to be presented in competition.
In parallel with the construction of the prototypes of the machine,
in August 1751, the restoration of the tower and the raising of the
wings was contracted to the architect Giorgio Massari. The restoration
works began in September 1751, while those to raise the wings began in
March 1755. The works consisted in raising two floors above the three
pre-existing ones, maintaining the same architectural style. The two
floors were recessed and therefore formed a terrace defended by a
balustrade. A balustrade was also placed on the terrace above the new
floors in the same style as the one below.
In March 1757 Massari
was replaced by Andrea Camerata who was his assistant. Camerata, as soon
as he took office, proposed to add two columns for each of the rooms
between the pillars supporting the wings, for a total of eight columns.
This is to improve the stability of the building by reducing the span of
the trabeations, and to improve the aesthetics. The columns were then
built and put in place towards the end of the summer of 1757 and are
still present today.
In 1752, having finished their models, the
two master mechanics Ferracina and Guarana presented them to the client
Procuratia de Supra. The commission appointed to evaluate the two
solutions chose that of Ferracina, who was then assigned the
construction of the machine for a sum of 9,000 ducats, subsequently
reduced to 8,000. Father Guarana was assigned the sum of 50 ducats in
recognition of the work of good workmanship however made.
The
construction of the new clock took five years and the mechanism was
therefore installed in December 1757. This new machine had some
differences compared to the previous one, in particular regarding the
hours which were marked and struck from 1 to 12 and not from 1 to 24 and
the greatly simplified astronomical dial.
A few months after the
installation of the new clock, the Public Prosecutor's Office of San
Marco commissioned Ferracina to analyze the mechanism relating to the
movement of the statues of the three kings, which for simplicity had
been deliberately kept out of the previous creation. The proposal was
accepted and the work completed for the Ascension Fair of 1759 in which
the procession of the Magi was visible again after many years of
absence.
In 1797 the Venetian Republic fell and Venice was
occupied by the French. In the chaotic months that followed the
formation of a Provisional Municipality of Venice, Jacobin sympathizers
of Venice vandalized signs and statues attributable to the Doge
government, including the destruction of the Doge statue on the Clock
Tower and various lions wings present on city gates and buildings.
Furthermore, after the fall of the Republic, the competence of the
towers passed from the Basilica of San Marco to the municipality of
Venice.
In 1855 the Town Hall, which was responsible for the tower, promoted
an inspection to verify the state of the work and identify any
restoration work. The appointed commission examined the work and drew up
a detailed report with the interventions to be carried out, but
unfortunately, given the state of the municipality's coffers, no action
was taken.
The question was re-examined two years later, after
the appointment of Alessandro Marcello as Podestà of Venice. The work
had now become urgent as the problems reported previously had been added
to by a partial collapse of the upper vault of the building which
supported the bell with the Moors. In 1857 a new inspection was
therefore made and the restoration works started.
The internal
and external restoration of the tower was begun in March 1858 under the
direction of the engineer Giannantonio Romano. The most important
intervention was the reconstruction of the vault on the top floor which
supported the weight of the bell and the Moors. A support arch
reinforced with six iron rods was built and the old lead-lined wooden
floor was replaced with stone slabs in order to create a practicable
terrace. Another important intervention was the reconstruction and
raising of about one meter of the base on which the bells and the
statues of the Moors rested, so that they could be seen more easily from
the square below. Inside, the wooden stairs were replaced with a single
metal spiral staircase leading from the first floor to the top floor,
and a second spiral staircase leading up to the terrace protected by a
domed trap door. Minor interventions concerned the exteriors, the mosaic
and the painting of the decorative parts of the facades, both the one
overlooking Piazza San Marco and the one overlooking the Merceria. Other
interventions concerned the arrangement of marble and plaster of the
wings of the building. The building works were considered concluded on
23 February 1859 following a positive test by the Commission for the
decoration.
As far as the clock was concerned, Professor Luigi De
Lucia was given the task, who began work in June 1858. De Lucia's main
intervention was to create, as requested, a system that would allow the
hours and minutes to be read from the square even at night. For this
purpose, two large dodecagonal-shaped metal wheels were built, called
drums, the sides of which were made up of perforated galvanized panels,
one reporting the minutes (in intervals of 5) and the other the 12
hours. The minutes were written in Arabic numerals and the hours in
Roman numerals, so that they were easily distinguishable from each other
to avoid confusion. Inside the wheels were gas lamps which made the
numbers visible through the tracery at night. The drums were placed in
the two rooms on the sides of the statue of the Madonna, in place of the
doors that opened to let the procession of the Magi pass. The drums were
also equipped with a mechanism that allowed them to be easily moved to
allow the procession of the three kings to take place during the
foreseen occasions. In addition to the drums, De Lucia made other
non-minor modifications to the clock mechanism, replacing the pendulum,
modifying the anchor and the escapement system and other parts of the
mechanism.
The main facade was restored to view on the occasion
of the Ascension Day, 2 June 1859, the day on which the clock was also
reactivated.
In 1896 the ancient outline of the dial indicating
the hours expressed in Roman numerals from I to XXIV was brought to
light, which had been covered by plaster in 1700.
At the beginning of the fifties it was necessary to intervene again
on the clock mechanism as a slight inclination of the building had
brought the pendulum to touch the edge of the opening and therefore it
no longer worked. In 1951 the maintenance work was entrusted to Giovanni
Peratoner who had succeeded his father as guardian (or "temperator") of
the watch. Peratoner arranged to raise the suspension point so that the
pendulum lens did not reach the plane below; in addition, the suspension
and its seat were replaced and the time-worn escapement lever was
rectified. Everything was carried out in a strictly conservative logic
aimed at altering the pre-existing building as little as possible. The
works ended in 1953 and the clock was able to work again.
In 1963
it was decided to release the procession of the Magi also on Epiphany
day, as well as in the Ascension period.
About thirty years later
a more substantial intervention is necessary. In 1996 Piaget proposed to
finance the restoration and an agreement was signed with the
Municipality of Venice for its execution. The works were entrusted to
the Mantuan watchmaker Alberto Gorla with the advice of the historian
Giuseppe Brusa. In 1997 the clock was disassembled together with the
mechanisms that regulate the astronomical dial. In February 1999, 500
years after its initial construction, the central part of the clock
mechanism, modified by Brusa, was shown reassembled in a press
presentation in the Doge's Palace.
In the months following the
aforementioned exhibition, a fierce controversy developed among the
experts in the field on the nature of the restoration carried out. In
fact, this restoration should have been "conservative", that is, such as
not to alter the original artefact except as much as necessary.
Conversely, some, including the last temperer of the Giovanni Peratoner
watch, but not only, claimed that unnecessary changes had been made in
order to allow a return to the eighteenth-century version of the
mechanism, i.e. the one created by master Ferracina, thus losing the
version made by De Lucia, which was also the one in operation at the
time of the restoration. The controversies lasted for years, also due to
the fact that the watch had indeed been shown to the press, but then had
not been reassembled and remained in the Doge's Palace, inexplicably,
for years. The clock was reassembled and the Tower opened to the public
only in May 2006.
After the financed intervention concluded in
2006, Piaget and the Municipality of Venice signed a three-year
agreement (2012-2014) which was then extended until 2017, for the
maintenance and overhaul of the clock mechanisms of the Tower by Piaget
.
The building consists of a central tower, built between 1496 and 1499
and two side wings, added at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
The central tower is about 24 m high and has a rectangular base of 9
x 6 meters with the smaller sides facing the square and the
Haberdashery. On this base stands a large 9 m high arch supported by
pillars and columns of the pseudo-Corinthian order. The arch connects
Piazza San Marco with the Merceria dell'Orologio. Above the arch is an
elegant stone entablature on whose frieze are carved the words:
«IO . PAVL . ET . IO . CAROL . FIL . REGIEN . OP . MID .»
which
indicate the names of the manufacturers of the watch and the date of
creation.
Above the entablature, the tower develops over three
floors highlighted on the side of Piazza San Marco by as many squares,
each of which is laterally delimited by Petrinean pillars terminated by
pseudo-Corinthian style capitals.
The lower box is occupied by
the clock face and by four circular windows placed at the corners. The
dial has a diameter of 4.5 meters and is in marble with the hour digits
carved in Roman numerals from I to XXIV. The central part is in gold and
blue enamel. The clock displays the time, day, moon phases and the signs
of the zodiac.
The central panel contains a niche decorated with
two small columns inside which there is a statue in embossed and gilded
metal sheet of the Madonna and Child. On the sides of the niche there
are two small doors, currently closed by golden plates that show the
hours and minutes in white on a blue background (tambures). At the feet
of the Madonna emerges a semicircular marble shelf which provides the
passage space for the procession of the Magi. The shelf is decorated
with an openwork gilded copper frieze.
The terminal panel,
slightly lower than the other two, houses the winged lion symbol of the
Serenissima, on a blue background with gold stars. The lion, carved in
marble, rests on a sill protruding from the underlying trabeation
supported by five small modillions. The tower ends with a terrace
surrounded by an Istrian stone balustrade formed by small columns and
small pillars. Finally, on the terrace, on a stone base as wide as the
tower, there are the bells and the two bronze statues that strike the
hours.
The facade of the tower on the Merceria side is entirely
covered in plaster and the only quadrant present is that of the clock,
also surrounded by marble with four circular windows at the corners of
the square. In the rest of the façade there are six windows, two under
the clock and four above, which give light to the internal rooms.
The two lateral facades of the tower, the ones free from the
adjoining wings, are covered in marble and have a door in the center
which allows access to the two small terraces above the wings.
The side wings of the building continue the portico of the neighboring
Procuratie Vecchie up to the Calle del Pellegrino. Note that these wings
are not exactly the same width, as they were bounded by pre-existing
constraints. The left wing (for those looking from the square) is 8.62 m
wide as it is delimited by the tower and the pre-existing Procuratie,
while the right wing is 8.17 m wide as it is delimited by the Tower and
the Calle del Pellegrino.
The tower has two clock faces, one on the south façade, the one
facing Piazza San Marco, and one on the north façade, the one facing the
Merceria dell'Orologio.
The quadrant of the south facade is
formed by a fixed part, consisting of an external circle in marble,
where the hours of the day are carved in Roman numerals from I to XXIV,
and by an internal mobile part in sheet copper enamelled in blue with
reliefs golden. The mobile part is composed of three rings: an outer
ring which contains the signs of the zodiac and the relative
constellations, the names of the months, and the days; a thin inner ring
carrying the sun-shaped hour hand with a golden sunburst; an even more
inner ring that contains the Moon with golden stars. In the center is
the Earth which is fixed. The Moon, in addition to circling the Earth
monthly, rotates on itself to indicate the various phases, being half
painted blue and half golden. The circle of constellations moves
following the hand of the Sun in such a way that it goes out and enters
the various constellations as foreseen by the zodiac.
The
astronomical part of the dial responds to the Ptolemaic model with the
Earth at the center of the solar system, as it was created between 1496
and 1499 when the Copernican revolution had not yet been made known.
It is important to point out that the dial as visible today is the
result of a simplification that took place in the restoration of the
watch which took place in the 18th century compared to the original
version. In fact, this version provided for eight circles, against the
current three. The five suppressed circles contained the planets Saturn,
Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury, and revolved around the Earth
according to the times defined by Ptolemy.
The clock is equipped with a mechanism, traditionally activated only
on the days of Epiphany and Ascension which, at every hour, produces the
so-called procession of the three kings.
The door placed to the
left of the Virgin in the central square of the tower opens and allows a
carousel of four wooden statues to pass, representing the angel
announcing the birth of Jesus with a trumpet followed by the three wise
men. The statues are dragged by a track mechanism placed on the ground
along the semicircular platform placed above the dial, and having
reached the Virgin they make her reverence, the angel raises the trumpet
as if to play it, while the Magi bow and lift the crown with the right
hand, while with the left they offer gifts to the Child, then they
re-enter the tower through the door to the right of the Virgin.
The mechanism that activates this procession is independent of the clock
machine and when you want to activate it, it must be put in
communication with the clock through the activation of a particular
device.
After the drums were made in the 19th century to show the
numbers of hours and minutes, which are found in the two panels on the
sides of the Virgin, the procession in order to take place requires that
the drums be raised and moved sideways manually. For this reason the
procession is activated only in two periods of the year.
The
statue of the doge
On 1 February 1499, Doge Agostino Barbarigo
inaugurated the clock. His statue was placed next to the Lion of San
Marco, symbol of the maritime Republic of Venice, in the upper panel of
the facade of the tower. This explains why the statue of the lion is not
in the center of the box, but moved to the left, precisely to make room
for the statue of the Doge. The statue was destroyed in 1797, with the
French occupation of the Venetian Republic.
The Venetian members
of the pro-French Jacobin municipality paid the stonemasons with public
money, who destroyed all the statues of the doges and as many lions as
possible.
Famous are the so-called Moors of Venice, so nicknamed by the
Venetians for their brown color. Placed at the top of the Tower on a
terrace, there are two bronze statues depicting two shepherds striking
the hours on a large bell with a club. They are very similar, but not
the same, and the visible difference consists in the detail of the
beard, which one lacks. The bearded Moor is called the "old", the other
the "young". A very precise detail contributes to this attribution of
roles. The Moors mark the hours by beating the bell with their hammers
(as many strokes as there are hours), but with a precise method: the old
Moor strikes the hours two minutes before the exact time, to represent
the time that has passed, while the Young Moro strikes the hour two
minutes later, to represent the time to come.
The statues of the
Moors were made by Ambrogio delle Ancore in 1497 and are about 2.5 m
high (over 7 Venetian feet).
The tower houses a bell of note E flat3, cast in 1497 by Simone
Campanato. The bell is 1.56 m high, has a diameter of 1.27 m and,
together with the Moors, weighs about 25 tons.
Inside the bottom
edge of the bell is the following engraving:
«OPVS . SIMEONVS .
FECIT . IHS . MCCCCXCVII . ADI . PRIMO . DECEMBRIO"
indicating
the name of the author and the date of installation of the bell. In
addition to the aforementioned engraving, it bears four medallions in
relief, two with the lion alternating with two with the coat of arms of
Doge Agostino Barbarigo.
The bell is struck by the Moors at every
hour in the manner indicated above, furthermore at noon and midnight,
two other hammers are operated, the sundial hammers, not visible from
the square.
Interior of the tower
The interior of the tower is
divided into four floors. The first three floors have two rooms, the top
floor has a single room with two windows overlooking the Haberdashery.
The two rooms overlooking Piazza San Marco on the second and third
floors house, respectively, the clock machine and the mechanism of the
three kings, as well as the fambura used to show the numbers of the
hours and minutes. The other rooms constituted the residence of the
keeper of the clock.
Initially, wooden stairs were used to move
from one floor to another in the tower. During the 19th century
restoration works, the wooden stairs were replaced by a single cast iron
spiral staircase of 72 steps, protected by a wrought iron railing, which
led from the first to the fourth floor. A second spiral staircase, of
the same material and shape, but smaller and with 28 steps, was used to
climb from the top floor to the terrace where the bell is located,
protected from the outside by a domed trap door.
Access to the
first floor of the tower is via a Costozza stone staircase consisting of
36 steps which leads from the road inside the tower. The entrance door
of the tower is the first door on the left that you meet after the
portico crossing the arch from the square going towards the
Haberdashery.
The invention of the verge escapement in Europe in the 13th century
led to the development of the first fully mechanical clocks. From the
13th century large tower clocks were built in European squares,
cathedrals and monasteries. These clocks were expensive, bulky, and
somewhat inaccurate, requiring constant adjustment. Furthermore, the
mechanism was activated by counterweight systems which had to be
repositioned with a certain frequency. Therefore, typically public
organizations that were equipped with a clock also had to worry about
its management and maintenance so that these devices could always
indicate the exact time. It therefore became common practice to
associate a guardian and maintenance figure with these watches, who was
called a "moderator" or even "temperator". It is worth emphasizing that
identifying this figure was not easy as the task required skills and
competence which, especially in the early days, were quite rare.
The tower clock in Venice was no exception to this custom, also because
the mechanism was of considerable complexity, and therefore had a temper
continuously, from its inauguration in 1499, for 500 years.
As
previously indicated, the tower clock was built by Giampaolo and
Giancarlo Raineri from Reggio between 1496 and 1498 and was inaugurated
in 1499. Unfortunately Giampaolo (the father) was unable to attend this
event because he died earlier. After the clock was installed, disputes
arose between Giancarlo Raineri and the prosecutors of the Serenissima
regarding the amount of the invoices that had to be paid to him for the
work carried out, for which he had only received an advance of 120
ducats. The dispute dragged on until the end of the 1500s when Raineri
agreed to settle the matter in exchange for a secure salary and
accommodation for him and his family and for his descendants as
guardians of the clock. On 20 November 1500 Giancarlo Raineri therefore
became the first temperer of the Clock Tower.
Giancarlo Raineri
died in Venice in 1517 and at that time his son Girolamo was too young
to take over his father's role, so the task of temperer was entrusted to
Giancarlo's assistant, Bernardino Cardo, who exercised it until 1528
when Girolamo took over. . Over the next few years, a number of
complaints arose that the watch had a number of problems that were not
being fixed. Therefore in 1531 Girolamo was relieved of his duties, as
he was still judged too inexperienced, and the task of temperer was
entrusted to the Paduan Raffaele Pencino.
In 1539 Girolamo, who
in the meantime had gained experience in Reggio Emilia in the workshop
of his uncles Lodovico and Lionello, was reinstated in the role of
temper. In 1550 Girolamo was accused of having left Venice for a long
time and having entrusted the management of the clock to an unqualified
person in his absence, who in turn was accused of having sold some parts
of the clock. A commission of experts was then appointed to evaluate the
condition of the watch and various testimonies were heard to evaluate
the veracity of the allegations. Following this, in February 1551 the
Procurators of San Marco fired Girolamo who was therefore also forced to
leave the house in the tower where he and his family lodged. Distraught
by this decision, Girolamo died a few months later.
When Raineri
left the scene, the situation of the clock got progressively worse, even
stopping completely. To remedy this, on 1 July 1551 a competition was
announced to identify a new temperer, who was granted a salary of 48
ducats a year and free accommodation for him and his family in the tower
and the obligation not to leave Venice if not with the explicit
permission of the Procurators of San Marco. Having evaluated the
applications received and based on a vote, the master Giuseppe Mazzoleni
from Padua was chosen and began his work on 20 July 1551. Mazzoleni
remained in office until his death in June 1577.
In the following
four centuries about thirty tempers succeeded one another, for some of
which there is confirmed historical information. Among these:
1613:
Giovan Battista Santi, author of a detailed description of the
astronomical quadrant;
1642: Gian Battista Serena followed by his
children Urbano (1660-1674) and Caterina (1674-1683);
1756: Giampaolo
Cloder, followed by his son Giacomo;
1790: Antonio Doria, followed by
his son Giovanni from 3 August 1827;
1900: Pietro Citella;
1916:
Emilio Peratoner, followed by his son Giovanni Battista (1936) and his
grandson Alberto (1986).
Alberto Peratoner was the 33rd and last
temperer of the clock of the Tower of Venice. In fact, following the
restoration that began in 1997 and ended in 2006 with the rearrangement
of the mechanism on site, the role of the temperer came to an end as one
of its main tasks, i.e. the winding of the watch, was no longer
necessary because the mechanism , with the new facelift, was equipped
with a motorized reloading system. Peratoner left the apartment in the
Tower, which had always been used by the tempers, and where he had lived
since his birth on March 30, 1998, thus putting an end to a tradition
that had lasted five centuries.