A bell tower is a tower that houses one or more bells.
A bell tower is a structure that houses one or more bells . Generally it is a tower that is part of a building.
For example: "The authorities announced a million-dollar investment to restore the cathedral's bell tower," "The boy ran to the bell tower to announce the news," "The criminal tried to take refuge in the bell tower, but was discovered by the police."
Characteristics of the bell towers
Bell towers, also called campaniles , usually belong to temples such as chapels , churches or cathedrals . They may also be present in public buildings such as town halls or governorships .
Its original function was to summon the neighbors by ringing the bells. In this way, at mass time, the church bells were rung.
The carillon
In the same church it is possible to find several bell towers; In turn, each of them can have one or more bells, so the term itself does not clearly describe all the characteristics of this architectural type . Nowadays, it is very common to replace bells with the carillon , a percussion musical instrument that is made up of a set of bells.
In the carillon, which is also called the bell organ and the aerial organ , we find several bells that reproduce a specific musical scale . To make them ring, it is necessary for a hammer to hit them, and this can be done in several ways:
- Manually : this method was probably used as early as the 11th century, although with greater certainty we know that it appeared in the 13th century.
- Mechanically : activating a set of hammers that the performer controls by means of levers that we could define as a keyboard. This type of carillon is more modern than the previous one, since it dates back to the end of the 15th century.
With the changes imposed by technology , the usefulness of bell towers was reduced as people began to be summoned by other means (advertisements in the media, telephone, etc.). Bell towers, however, are still used in many regions, either for the same purpose as in the past or for reasons of tradition.
The bell towers lost practical use over time.
Examples of bell towers
The Tower of Pisa , famous for its leaning, is the bell tower of the Pisa Cathedral . Construction began in 1173 and soon began to lean. Between 1990 and 2011 this bell tower was closed to the public because engineering work was carried out to prevent its collapse.
La Giralda is another well-known bell tower. It belongs to the Cathedral of Santa María de la Sede of Seville ( Spain ) and combines sectors that belonged to a mosque with parts superimposed by Christians.
The case of Ruan
In Normandy , one of the thirteen French regions that are part of the republic, we find the city of Rouen , its administrative capital, which is known as "the city of a hundred steeples." The reason for this very particular nickname is that there you can visit numerous churches in which, as mentioned above, this body of bells formerly used to summon parishioners cannot be missing.
Another fact that is of great importance to Rouen is that Joan of Arc was condemned to die at the stake there. It is believed that the nickname was coined by Victor Hugo himself, so we can guess that before the 19th century people did not refer to Rouen as "the city of a hundred bell towers" .
The historic center of Rouen is among the richest places in northern France , perhaps its most notable church is the Notre Dame Cathedral , which has starred in numerous fictional stories due to its beauty and its imposing structure, which boasts the tower. highest in the country.