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Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Clock Towers of Venice

Venice boasts of some really beautiful clock towers. The first, the most famous here, the clock tower standing on St Mark's Square. In striking Blue and Gold, with signs of the zodiac marking the 24 hours of the day, the clock tower is an eye-catching piece. A coming together of two number systems , The Roman numerals are on the outer edge indicating the passing of hours. The minutes are measured by the Arabic numerals sitting on the right. The clock tower dates back to the 15 century. But the clock itself had to be restored many a time to ensure that it was an accurate measure of the passing minutes. The archway below the tower leads out of St Mark's square and into the main street of the city leading up to Rialto.

The Golden pointer has an image of the Sun. And within the clock face one can also see the earth and the moon. Clocks such as these are called Astronomical clocks.

The Clock Tower in Pizza San Marco
Two gigantic structures stand on top , these strikers of the bell, are symbolic of the young and the old..  Both of which have equal grasp of time, for time waits for none. The size of the structures was to ensure that they could be seen by ships in a distance.
The bronze structures that strike the bell every hour..



Clock Tower in Rialto Market,..

Walking down Rialto Market, we see another clock tower. Sadly time stands still for this one in strange contrast to the feverish activity in the market circle. Its more straightforward that the more famous cousin in St Mark's Square, but is extremely pretty nonetheless...

M

2 comments:

  1. A lovely collection, I have spent just a few hours in this beautiful city while I was in Modena for a conference. So more pictures please :D I saw too little of it in reality.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Mridula. :)More on the way.
    You can find a couple more on my previous entry on Venice here -
    http://traveltazzels.blogspot.com/2010/06/venice.html

    ReplyDelete

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