The Clock Tower

Rising over the square in Yozgat's Medrese neighbourhood, the Clock Tower is one of the city's best-known landmarks. It was built in 1908 from yellow köfeki (porous limestone) by local master craftsman Şakir Usta, during the mayoralty of Tevfikzade Ahmet Bey. Standing seven storeys tall including the ground floor and the bell level, the tower is topped by a wooden domed roof. Just above the bell floor, each of the tower's four façades carries its own clock face; the French-made mechanisms, signed by the makers Nores Jura and L. D. Odobey Cadet, survive to this day in essentially original form. The bells, weighing roughly 250 kilograms, ring on the hour and can be heard across the entire city. Visitors enter through a round-arched doorway on the north façade and climb to the upper floors via zigzag wooden staircases; below the bell level, each storey has three small round windows per façade, and one façade features a projecting balcony with ornate railings and balusters. The ground floor originally served as a muvakkithane, a room for determining precise prayer times, while the tower doubled as a fire-watch post. Its surrounding square was redeveloped into a civic centre during the Republican era, placing the tower, together with the nearby Çapanoğlu Mosque, at the very heart of Yozgat's historic centre.