Bell tower

A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell towers, often part of a municipal building, an educational establishment, or a tower built specifically to house a carillon. Church bell towers often incorporate clocks, and secular towers usually do, as a public service.bell tower, at Mostarbell tower, at Teruel, (Spain).Old Belfry of Tōdai-ji, Japan (752, rebuilt 1200)An Irish round tower, bell tower, at Glendalough, Ireland, c. 900 ADPrimitive bell tower at Katúň, Slovakia (≈12th century)Leaning Tower of Pisa, campanile of the Duomo di Pisa, Italy (1173-1372)The Domtoren, bell tower of the St. Martin's Cathedral, Utrecht, Netherlands (13th century)Separate bell tower at Feock Church, Cornwall (13th century)Inside the belfry of St Medard & St Gildard's, in Little Bytham in Lincolnshire, England (13th century)Beijing Bell Tower (1272, reconstructed 1420, 1800)Campanile at the University of Northern Iowa (1927)Bell Tower of Xi'an (1384)Belfry of Aalst, Belgium (1460)The belfry of Surb Zoravor church in Yerevan, Armenia (1693)Great Lavra Bell Tower of Kiev Pechersk Lavra, Ukraine (1745)Bell tower at Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo (1797)Belfry of Bruges, Belgium (1240) (modified 1480s, 1820)Bell Tower, Church of the Good Shepherd (Rosemont, Pennsylvania) (1894)Sather Tower (More commonly known as 'The Campanile'), Berkeley, CA (1914)Belfry of Lille, France (1921)The Singing Tower at Bok Tower Gardens, Lake Wales, FL (1929)Main Building (University of Texas at Austin), Austin, TX (1937)Rainbow Tower, Niagara Falls, Canada (1947)The Campanile at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS (1950)Campanile at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, D.C., paid for by the Knights of Columbus; known as 'The Knight's Tower'. (1959)The bell tower at University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA (1960s)The Addleshaw Tower of Chester Cathedral, England (1973–74)Brigham Young University Centennial Carillon Tower, Provo, Utah (1975)'Swan Bells', Perth, Western Australia (2000) A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell towers, often part of a municipal building, an educational establishment, or a tower built specifically to house a carillon. Church bell towers often incorporate clocks, and secular towers usually do, as a public service. The Italian term campanile (/ˌkæmpəˈniːli, -leɪ/, also US: /ˌkɑːm-/, Italian: ), deriving from the word campana meaning 'bell', is synonymous with bell tower; though in English usage Campanile tends to be used to refer to a free standing bell tower. A bell tower may also in some traditions be called a belfry, though this term may also refer specifically to the substructure that houses the bells and the ringers rather than the complete tower. The tallest free-standing bell tower in the world, 113.2 metres (371 ft) high, is the Mortegliano Bell Tower, in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, Italy. Bells are rung from a tower to enable them to be heard at a distance. Church bells can signify the time for worshippers to go to church for a communal service, and can be an indication of a time to pray, without worshippers coming to the church. They are also rung on special occasions such as a wedding, or a funeral service. In some religious traditions they are used within the liturgy of the church service to signify to people that a particular part of the service has been reached. A bell tower may have a single bell, or a collection of bells which are tuned to a common scale. They may be stationary and chimed, rung randomly by swinging through a small arc, or swung through a full circle to enable the high degree of control of English change ringing. They may house a carillon or chimes, in which the bells are sounded by hammers connected via cables to a keyboard. These can be found in many churches and secular buildings in Europe and America including college and university campuses.