St Mark's Moors' Clock's Tower's Museum in Venice Italy

The Moors' Clock's Tower's Museum in Saint Mark's Square, Venice: history, opening hours, contacts, fares of tickets and useful information for the visit.

Doge's Palace and St. Mark's Basilica's Tour - Saint Mark's Square - Venice

Discover the main civic and religious monuments of Saint Mark's Square: Doge's Palace and St. Mark's Basilica. Tickets included. It also includes the entrance to Correr Museum and to Marciana Library. An official guide and ticket skip the line.

Moors' St Mark's Clock's Tower's Museum - Saint Mark's Square, San Marco - Venice

The Torre dell'Orologio Museum, also known as Torre dei Mori, is located at the entrance of Piazza San Marco at the mouth of the via nervra known as Merceria for the distinctly commercial character that has always characterized it.

The visit is by reservation only with call to the call center that answers to the number 848082000 and limited, given the scarce accessibility of the place, to groups no more than 12 people. The visitor can then enter the Clock Tower and see closely the complex mechanisms that have governed it for centuries, the pulleys, weights and counterweights of the clock, the mechanisms of rotation of the Magi and the Angel and, finally, the two doors from which the statues come out in procession on the day of the Epiphany and the Ascension.

After these passages of purely technical taste we arrive at the two terraces adjacent to the tower at the level of the Procuratie Veccchiee quind, through a staircase, to the terrace where the statues of the Moors and the bells reside. From here you can enjoy a unique view of Piazza San Marco and Venice.
The Clock Tower of Venice is a small architectural gem, of Renaissance taste, set in the monumental and serious wing of the Procuratie Vecchie di Piazza San Marco. In a certain way, ideally, it delimited the part of the square that was once used for the administration of power from that destined for religious duties represented by the adjacent Basilica of San Marco. In addition, the bell tower also faces the San Marco Basin, a place that expresses the commercial power of the Serenissima and which at the time was a place for the arrival of sovereigns, ambassadors and poilitics from all over the world.

Here before the Torre dei Mori there was already a tower with the old Sant'Alipio clock. With a resolution of the Senate of 1493 and with the assignment to Zuan Carlo da Reggio the work began in 1495 and in 1499 the Torre dei Mori was inaugurated, thanks to its privileged position facing the arrival of the boats at San Marco , soon became a symbol of the city throughout the world.

The architectural attribution of the monument is not certain but, due to a stylistic figure quite recognizable in the lagoon, it is proposed to assign it to Mauro Codussi.

At the beginning the statues of the three Magi and Angel Kings would have to go out every hour to parade in procession in front of the Madonna with child; however, the delicacy of the mechanism soon forced different choices that still characterize the monument today for what concerns this side. Since the eighteenth century, the "exit" is scheduled only twice a year.

In the eighteenth century, on the design of Giorgio Massari, the terraces were added while in the nineteenth century the wooden stairs were demolished to replace them with spiral metal ladders. Left in a state of decay for decades the Clock Tower returned to life at the beginning of the XXI century when the restoration was finished and a party was made for its inauguration in which a large part of the citizens took part.

How to reach the Moors' St Mark's Clock's Tower's Museum

The Moors' St Mark's Clock's Tower's Museum is located in San Marco in Piazza San Marco. From Rialto it can be reached in 5 minutes on foot.
From Rialto, from the Railway Station and from Piazzale Roma, take line 1 with Vallaresso or San Zaccaria stop. Or the line 2 (fastest) with San Zaccaria stop.

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