Zytglogge

Interesting facts

The clock's calendar cannot cope with leap years, so every 29 February the date hand has to be reset by hand.

The great hour bell, about 1.27 m across and weighing some 1,400 kg, carries a Latin inscription recording that it was cast in October 1405.

The astrolabe dial uses a southern projection of the sky, typical of 15th-century clocks, which suggests it predates the 1530 clockwork.

The walls are about 2.6 m thick on the west, where they formed part of the city defences, but only 65 cm on the east side facing the town.

As a 14th-century women's prison, the tower held women convicted of sexual relations with priests.

The name Zytglogge is first recorded in 1413; before that the Bernese called the tower the "cage" and then the "new tower".

A golden sun on the hour hand of the east clock face is pivot-mounted so that it always stays upright.

The tower's massive-looking stone corner blocks are only decorative facings, held in place by visible iron hooks.

Over the centuries the upper rooms served as archives, a fire-hose store and even an air-raid shelter, and only three original floor beams survived.

The smaller quarter-hour bell was cast in 1887 to replace a cracked original of 1486.

Why it is worth it

The Zytglogge — Bernese dialect for "time bell" — is the tower that Bern tells time by, and has done for six hundred years. It began around 1218–1220 as the gate tower of the city's western wall, a squat structure only 16 m high. As Bern grew westward it lost its defensive role, was raised, served for a time as a women's prison, and burned out in the great fire of 1405. When it was rebuilt, a clock was installed above the gate along with a great bell, cast in 1405 by Johann Reber of Aarau, which still strikes the hours.

Today's outline, a tower 54.5 m high with a sweeping late-Gothic spire, dates largely from a Baroque remodelling of 1770–1771, and the facades carry large clock faces on both sides. The west face bears Victor Surbek's 1929 fresco "Beginning of Time". The real attraction is on the east side, towards the old town: an astronomical clock in the form of an astrolabe, whose dial shows the hour, the day of the week, the month, the sign of the zodiac and the phase of the moon. Above it a painted frieze shows five classical gods standing for the days and planets. The clockwork that drives it all was forged in place by Kaspar Brunner in 1527–1530.

Arrive a few minutes before the hour. About four minutes early, a rooster crows, a jester rings two small bells and a procession of armed bears circles out of the tower and back again; then the rooster crows again, a bearded figure of Chronos turns his hourglass, and high above, a gilded knight in armour, known to the Bernese as Hans von Thann, strikes the hour on the great bell. The Zytglogge is the oldest monument of Bern and part of its UNESCO-listed Old City; the interior, with its clockwork, can be seen on guided tours.

Getting there

The tower stands in the middle of Bern's Old City. Bern Airport (BRN) is about 5.5 km away.

Zytglogge

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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