Clock tower

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This is an article on clock towers. For the video game series of the same name, see Clock Tower (series).

A clock tower is a tower built with one or more (often four) clock faces.The clock tower is usually part of a church or municipal building such as a town hall, but many clock towers are free-standing.

The mechanism inside the tower is known as a turret clock. It often marks the hour (and sometimes segments of an hour) by sounding large bells or chimes, sometimes playing simple musical phrases or tunes.

Although clock towers are today mostly admired for their aesthetics, they once served an important purpose. Before the middle of the twentieth century, most people did not have watches; clock towers were therefore placed near the centers of towns and were often the tallest structures there.

Three of the best-known clock towers are the clock tower which houses Big Ben (often itself colloquially referred to as Big Ben) of the Palace of Westminster in London, the Rajabai Tower in Mumbai, and the Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin.

On New Year's Eve 2004 four 6.3-metre clock faces were added to the top of the Warsaw Palace of Culture and Science building in Warsaw, Poland making it the highest 4-faced clock tower in the world and the second highest clock tower in the world.<ref>History of PKiN in a nutshell.</ref>. The NTT DoCoMo Yoyogi Building 240 meters (787 feets) is 10 meters higher and is the highest clock tower in the world.

Warsaw Palace of Culture and Science, the second highest clock clock tower	The Clock Tower Bilding of The Chinese High School, a national monument of Singapore	Einsiedeln Abbey	Stornoway Town Centre, Scotland
McGraw Tower at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York	Palace of Westminster, London, England	The Rajabai Tower, South Mumbai, India	The Spasskaya Tower, Moscow
The Clock Tower at Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong was part of the former Kowloon Station	Peace Tower, Parliament Hill Ottawa, Canada	Saint Nicolas church, Kozani, Greece	Malay College Kuala Kangsar, Malaysia
Central Terminal, Sydney, Australia	The old Star Ferry pier in Central, Hong Kong	Chamberlain Clock Tower,The University of Birmingham, Birmingham, England