Clock tower

Clock tower 

A clock tower is a tower built with one or more (often four) clock faces.The clock tower is usually part of a church or municipal building such as a town hall, but many clock towers are free-standing.

The mechanism inside the tower is known as a turret clock. It often marks the hour (and sometimes segments of an hour) by sounding large bells or chimes, sometimes playing simple musical phrases or tunes.

Although clock towers are today mostly admired for their aesthetics, they once served an important purpose. Before the middle of the twentieth century, most people did not have watches; clock towers were therefore placed near the centers of towns and were often the tallest structures there. The use of clock towers in the West date back to the ancient Roman period, while other civilizations such as medieval China also featured clock towers (see Su Song).

Some clock towers are famous landmarks. Three of the best-known are the clock tower which houses Big Ben (often itself colloquially referred to as Big Ben) of the Palace of Westminster in London, the Rajabai Tower in Mumbai, and the Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin.

On New Year's Eve 2004 four 6.3-metre clock faces were added to the top of the Warsaw Palace of Culture and Science building in Warsaw, Poland making it the highest 4-faced clock tower in the world and the second highest clock tower in the world.[1]. The NTT DoCoMo Yoyogi Building 240 meters (787 feet) is 10 meters higher and is the highest clock tower in the world. The Allen-Bradley Clock Tower holds the record for largest non-chiming four faced clock. The chimes were intentionally left out so that the Big Ben tower would still have that record.


A turret clock is a large mechanical clock set in a tower for use by a large number of people.

Typically found in a church tower or other public building the clock mechanism drives the hands on one or more large clock faces visible from the outside.

Public and tower clocks are also known as turret clocks, and nowadays is not necessarily a large mechanical clock. Most of these clocks have some mechanical parts such as gears behind the dials known as motionwork, but often the hands are directly driven by electric motors.