Torre dell'Orologio (Museo del Tempo)

Mantua's Clock Tower rises between Palazzo della Ragione and the Rotonda di San Lorenzo on Piazza delle Erbe. Its astronomical clock connects the city's civic architecture with Renaissance mathematics and astrology.

Why it matters

The clock was more than a device for telling ordinary time. Its dial combined hours with zodiac signs, lunar information and planetary hours, expressing the close relationship between astronomy and astrological belief at the Gonzaga court.

What to notice

Roman numerals and the zodiac organise the elaborate dial. Inside the tower, the Museum of Time preserves components removed or replaced during the clock's long history, including its fifteenth-century crown, hands and embossed copper zodiac signs. A Foucault pendulum and nineteenth-century rotating structures associated with night-time reading add different approaches to measuring and displaying time.

Context and history

The tower was built in 1472–1473 to Luca Fancelli's design for Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga. Court mechanic, mathematician and astrologer Bartolomeo Manfredi devised the clock, inaugurated in December 1473. Successive alterations to the mechanism produced the historical material preserved in the museum.