Tower clock

Four round dials visible from the main courtyard and the garden are located on the four façades of the south tower helmet of the Wilanów Palace. The royal tower clock of King John III, equipped with chimes, was stolen in 1707 by Moscow troops. In the Wilanów collection a clock mechanism which replaced it from the beginning of the 18th century is currently kept in storage. It is a cellular type mechanism, equipped with the weight drive. The weights are tensioned by means of a crank placed directly on the axes of the driving drums. It uses an anchor catch and a long pendulum of the heavy type suspended on a leather pendant. A brass fusee transmits the rotary movement to a vertical drive, which in turn transmits it to a timing gear with four horizontal drives, directly moving the four individual hands on the four dials of the clock. The mechanism strikes the hours and quarters (by hammers on two bells) with separate ratchet wheels and pinwheel regulators. The hour and half-hour hands are marked on the dials in the tower lucarnes. This is one of the few single-face clocks in the country, which has never had a dial gear. Repaired many times, it bears the marks of later modernisations.

AK