Torre della Ghirlandina

Stand at the foot of the tower for a moment and listen. Pigeons shift on the cornices above. Footsteps cross the stone of Piazza Grande. Somewhere overhead, a bell may mark the hour. Now tilt your head back. The pale stone climbs and climbs, and then it narrows into a slender spire. This is the Ghirlandina, the bell tower of Modena Cathedral, and for more than seven centuries it has been the first thing travellers see of this city.

The tower is close to ninety metres tall. On the flat plain of the Po River, that is a lot of height. For people approaching Modena on foot, by cart or later by train, the spire rose over the fields long before the city walls came into view. It worked as a landmark, a lookout and a clock all at once. Locals still treat it as the symbol of their town. You will see its outline on shop signs, labels and souvenirs as you walk.

The story of the tower begins with the cathedral beside it. Work on the cathedral started in 1099, under an architect remembered by the name Lanfranco. The church was built to house the remains of Saint Geminianus, the city's patron saint. The bell tower went up alongside it. Builders raised the square lower section first, in the solid Romanesque style. Romanesque means the round-arched, heavy-walled architecture of Europe around the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Look at the lower floors and you can see that style clearly. The walls are thick. The openings are small and rounded. Bands of blind arches run across the stone like a repeating pattern of shallow niches. The cathedral builders reused marble and stone from the ruins of Roman Mutina, the ancient town that lay under modern Modena. So the stone you are looking at may have had another life long before the Middle Ages.

For a long time, the tower stopped at the square base. Then, in the late thirteenth century, a new phase began. The master builder Arrigo da Campione, from a family of stonemasons from the lakes north of Milan, added the upper section. He gave the tower its eight-sided crown and its tall pointed spire. The work was finished in 1319. That top section is Gothic, the lighter, taller style that came after Romanesque.

This is the first surprise most visitors miss. You are not looking at one design. You are looking at two different centuries stacked on top of each other. Follow the tower upward with your eyes and try to find the point where the heavy square body gives way to the octagon. The change is graceful, but once you notice it, you cannot stop seeing it.

And the name? Ghirlandina comes from the Italian word for a garland. The usual explanation points to the two marble balustrades near the top, which wrap around the spire like a pair of garlands. Some locals also say the name grew from comparisons with the Giralda, the bell tower of Seville. That second story is told often, but it is best treated as a popular tale rather than settled fact.

Now, a second surprise. The Ghirlandina is not perfectly straight. Like many tall towers on soft ground, it leans slightly. The soil of the Po plain is made of river sediment, and heavy stone settles into it over time. Medieval builders noticed the movement as they worked and adjusted later courses to compensate. Stand back in the square and compare the tower's edge with the cathedral wall. You may spot the gentle tilt.

The tower was never only a church building. For centuries the city government shared responsibility for it. Its bells called citizens together, warned of fire and danger, and marked the working day. Watchmen lived and worked high inside. One of the upper rooms is known as the Room of the Torresani, the tower keepers, and its walls carry old painted decoration. The tower served the faith and the town at the same time.

Then there is the bucket. Yes, a wooden bucket. In 1325, Modena defeated Bologna at the Battle of Zappolino. According to the traditional story, Modenese soldiers chased the Bolognese all the way to their city and carried off a bucket from a well as a trophy. The Bolognese, so the tale goes, never got it back. In the seventeenth century, the Modenese poet Alessandro Tassoni turned the episode into a comic epic poem called The Stolen Bucket.

A copy of that famous bucket is kept inside the tower, in a room named after it. The original is preserved in the town hall, the Palazzo Comunale, across Piazza Grande. It is a strange thing to find in a cathedral bell tower. But it says a lot about this city. Modena keeps its sacred history and its civic pride side by side, and it keeps its sense of humour too.

The tower, the cathedral and Piazza Grande together form a UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed in 1997. The listing recognises them as an outstanding example of Romanesque art and of the bond between a medieval city and its church. In the early twenty-first century the tower went through a long restoration. Experts cleaned the stone, repaired weathered carving and studied how the structure moves.

Before you walk on, take one more look. Notice how the tower stands slightly apart from the cathedral, linked to it by arches at its base. Notice the warm colour of the stone as the light changes. Listen for the bells. People in this square have heard them for more than seven hundred years... and as you walk away through the old streets, turn around once. You will probably still see the spire rising above the rooftops.