Qualla: St Mark's Clocktower

St Mark's Clocktower: Introduction

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit kallerna, CC BY-SA 4.0. Twice a year -- at Epiphany and on Ascension Day -- three mechanical Magi led by a trumpet-bearing angel emerge from a doorway on the face of St Mark's Clocktower, process around a gallery past the Virgin and Child, bow, and disappear through a door on the other side. This has been happening, with interruptions, since 1499. The procession is the most theatrical element of a clock tower that was designed, from its first sketches, as a piece of theater: a monumental archway announcing to anyone arriving by water that Venice was wealthy, ingenious, and in full command of time itself.

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Image: kallerna | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Mark's Clocktower: Reading the Face

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jean-Pol GRANDMONT, CC BY 3.0. The clock face is a cosmological instrument rendered in blue enamel and gold. A fixed marble circle engraved with 24 hours in Roman numerals frames the display. A golden pointer tipped with an image of the sun tracks the hour as it rotates around the dial. Beneath it, the signs o...

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Image: Jean-Pol GRANDMONT | CC BY 3.0

St Mark's Clocktower: The Moors on the Roof

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MarkusMark, CC BY-SA 3.0. At the top of the tower, two massive bronze figures strike the hours on a bell cast by Simeone Campanato at the Arsenal in 1497. One figure is old, the other young -- a visual metaphor for time's passage. They are called the Moors not because of any intended representation but be...

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Image: MarkusMark | CC BY-SA 3.0

St Mark's Clocktower: Building the Gateway

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alma Pater, CC BY-SA 3.0. By 1490, an older clock at the northwest corner of St Mark's church had deteriorated badly. In 1493, the Venetian Senate commissioned a replacement and entrusted its construction to Gian Paolo Ranieri and his son Gian Carlo, clockmakers from Reggio Emilia. Two years later, the Se...

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Image: Alma Pater | CC BY-SA 3.0

St Mark's Clocktower: Five Centuries of Tinkering

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jacques-Louis David, Public domain. The clock has never been left alone for long. By 1531, after the younger Ranieri's death, it was already malfunctioning, and the Council of Ten appointed a permanent keeper to live in a wing of the tower. In 1751, Giorgio Massari began restoring the buildings, and Bartolomeo Ferr...

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Image: Jacques-Louis David | Public domain