I was making my way through what seems to be the actual city center of Padova and it looks much busier than the area where I was staying. I was still glad that I stayed there since it was much quieter though I’m sure there are more places to eat and experience here. One of the structures which I saw was the Clock Tower of Padova or Torre dell’Orologio. As you might expect there is a tower with a large clock face. The tower was built in 1430s and it was subsequently enhanced through the years. It was a bit too high up to see much of the detail of the design of the clock though.

Of course the point of making a clock tower that tall is so people can see the time from far away. One thing which I noticed was that this is actually a twenty four hour clock. This means that there was only one hand on the clock. The numbers are all in roman numerals and curiously the twenty fourth hours is on the right, not on the top as it is common now. This style of time keeping is the Italian or Bohemian style.

Harder to see are the zodiac signs of which Libra is missing because it didn’t exist at that time. Further towers the center is a diagram of the earth and the moon. If I am correct, this plate rotates to show the phases of the moon. There is a hole in the face which exposes further holes behind the place which describe the moon phase. I have seen several astronomical clocks before but I never noticed this feature before. I think it is very interesting to discover this and I was just looking at it.

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