Torre dell'Orologio Site Features

The dial is a large gilded disc on blue, read from the square below. It gives the hour on a 24-division scale, the lunar phase, and the position of the sun against the zodiac -- an astronomical instrument rather than a timepiece, and legible as such once you know what the rings mean.

Libra is absent from the zodiac ring. Local tradition blames a clockmaker underpaid and taking revenge; the likelier explanation is that the 1428 rebuild simply laid the signs out in a way that left no room for it. The legend has outlived every attempt to correct it.

Falconetto's 1532 arch at the base is a clean piece of Veneto Renaissance classicism grafted onto a medieval tower, and the join is not disguised.

The dial

Hours, moon phase and zodiac on one gilded face. Best read from the middle of the square rather than up close.

The missing sign

Eleven zodiac signs where there should be twelve. Libra is the one that isn't there.

The mechanism

The 15th-century movement survives and is occasionally opened to guided visits -- worth asking about locally, as it is not on a fixed public schedule.

The tower closes the western end of Piazza dei Signori, standing in the middle of the Palazzo del Capitanio, with the Loggia del Consiglio along one side and the Duomo two minutes further west.