Guide
The İzmir Clock Tower was built in 1901 to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the accession of the Ottoman sultan Abdülhamid II, and it has become the emblem of the city.
It stands in Konak Square, in the open ground between the government house, the entrance to the Kemeraltı bazaar, the Konak Yalı Mosque and the building of the İzmir metropolitan municipality. Twenty-five metres high and of four storeys, it is one of many clock towers raised in the Ottoman provinces at the same period by the sultan's will, but its design and the way it was built set it apart from the others, and it is held to be the most graceful and best-looking of the Ottoman clock towers.
Celebrations were being organised across the empire for the anniversary, with efforts to leave something lasting behind. On 1 August 1900 the governor of İzmir, Kamil Pasha, met with local administrators, civil and military officials and leading figures of the city, and it was decided there to build a clock with a fountain near the Sarı Kışla barracks.
The building commission approved a design in an Arab architectural manner by the French architect Raymond Charles Péré. The foundation was laid on 1 September 1900 during the celebrations of the sultan's twenty-fourth year on the throne. The tower was largely finished in August 1901; the remaining work, including the supply of the clocks, was left until after the ceremony, and the opening took place on 1 September 1901. There are records saying the clock itself was a gift from the German emperor Wilhelm II, given in token of the closeness between the two states.
Symbols of Abdülhamid's rule were set on the tower: the sultan's monogram on two sides just below the clock faces, and the Ottoman coat of arms on the other two. After the republic passed its law removing writing, marks and symbols recalling and praising the Ottomans, the arms and monograms were chiselled off and a crescent and star put in their place.
The tower was damaged in the İzmir earthquake of 1974, which measured 5.2. The top storey above the clock faces came down and the clock stopped at 02.04, the moment of the shock. It was repaired within two years and the clock was set going again.
