Description

Crenellated tower (Clock Tower), built with rows of stone and brick, with a lookout at the top, framed between cornices and semicircular windows paired on all fronts.

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Under the shield appears a beautiful clock, carved in stone and elegantly made, which probably gave its name to the new construction. Clock that at the present moment lacks function, because of it only its carved sphere persists. Clock that would be substituted, probably in the 19th century, by the one we see below the body of the lookout.

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Everything seems to indicate, according to the chapter records of the seventeenth century, that the Clock Tower was an annex to the royal prison with which it was connected. On September 12, 1653, it is related that an inmate had fled through the tower due to the carelessness of the watchmaker, which is why he would be punished and replaced. Watchtower from where the streets and people of Andujar can be seen and from where the work rhythm of their neighbors was marked. At the present time, the Clock Tower is, without a doubt, one of the most representative elements of the monumentality of the city of Andujar and a consubstantial part of the morphology of the Santa Maria Square.

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On the western front and halfway up we find the imperial shield of Carlos V and a clock carved in stone. In the first ornamental element, a double-headed eagle carries the imperial crown and the Golden Fleece borders the shield. In the right canton the lineage of the Trastamara and of the Habsburgs and in the sinister the one of the House of Avis, that correspond to Carlos V and his wife Isabel of Portugal, respectively. Its presence is due to the coincidence of the execution of the work with the reign of Carlos V, since it was custom at the time to leave testimony of the reigning monarch in the new constructions. Imperial shield that reminds the citizen of Andujar, in addition, their fidelity to the monarch in the years of the war of the Communities, forming part of the Board of Las Ramblas. It was not of that same opinion its mayor, Francisco de Vergara, who "felt sympathy for the Communards, and learned the city of the dealings that he brought with them, was outraged in such a way, that in the Cabildo it removed the rod from the Justice". The emperor was very pleased with the loyalty and obedience of the city and proof of this was the letter he sent on July 20, 1520, from the city of Îpres, in which he thanked the attitude of the city towards his person in those difficult moments

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The only documentary source that exists today on this construction is on its western front and says: "Reigning his majesty and being / corregidor of this city the very magnificent gentleman Francisco / de Alarcon twenty-four of Granada and its mayor Bachelor Sancho Díaz / de Baeza it ended on August twenty one thousand five hundred and thirty-four years, Mayordomo Alonso Yañez. "

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At its base there is the Municipal Tourism Office, from where you can access the panoramic viewpoint.

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Association of Friends of the Patrimony of Andujar