This is a wonderful historical site and it is not to be missed. The bell tower of the Cathedral of Messina contains the biggest and most complex mechanical and astronomical clock in the world.
It has the face of the clock, the lion, the rooster, and Dina and Clarenza, the moon, the Madonna of the Letter, the biblical scenes, the planetarium, the church of Montalto, the carousel of the ages, the carousel of the days of the week and a perpetual calendar.
It is the city's main attraction as at noon every day a complex system of leverages, gears and counterweights determines the movement of the gilded bronze statues located in the façade.
They are related to the civil and religious traditions of the city.
The Clock Tower can be visited inside. Along the staircase, you can admire the bronze statues and the complex and ingenious system of leverages and gears that generate the movement of the clock.
The clock's displays appear in several different levels of the campanile, on the sides facing the square and the cathedral.
At the top there is a wonderful you view over the city of Messina and its strait.
It was designed by Ungerer of Strasbourg and inaugurated in 1933.
The mechanism moves every day at 12.00am and lasts 12 minutes. On every quarter hour the two heroines on the sides of the rooster, Dina and Clarenza, strike the quarters and the hours, and the carousel of ages moves.
Théodore Ungerer, wanted to give his complex mechanism a profound symbolic significance: the scenes on the clock in their perfect harmony movement and synchrony are a symbol of man's soul constantly seeking God. The 16 parts of the clock are therefore divided into four tetralogies, placed in a cross design. read more
