Copenhagen City Hall

 Any building with a door this beautiful has to be worth a trip inside. The first thing we saw in the City Hall was the perpetual clock designed by Jen Olsen. That was worth the visit in itself.

    

There is a separate blog on this clock built to run for thousands of years.

This door, with the striking brass plates, is inside the building and through the glass, you can see a stained glass window in the stairwell.

These are images from the courtyard. Europeans know how to create beautiful doors and doorways.

I'm going to put several images below to give an idea of the lovely details in this building. Of note are the graceful trash cans and the beautifully painted walls in the stair wells. 

With a mural of early days in Copenhagen there is an image of a person hanging in a gallows. There is no great deal in this portion of the mural but it is clearly a person. This was how thieves were dealt with in earlier centuries. One thing that we later learned is that if a farmer killed a wolf, the wolf would also be hung in the gallows. Apparently farmers, particularly sheep farmers, were adept at getting wolves because Denmark had none for quite a long time. They were recently reintroduced and the populace, particularly the shepherds, seem unsure that they are willing to share space with wolves.

   

Jens Olsen's Fantastic World Clock

     Clock is a small, innocent word. Most people reading it might think of a small little alarm clock or an old digital clock radio. I imagine the clock Clement Hurd drew in Good Night Moon.

      Of course, one might think of something spectacular like Big Ben but rarely would anyone think of a masterpiece like the Jens Olesen  (1872-1945) clock. In 1897, when he was 25 and saw the astronomical clock at Notre Dame, he decided to build a perpetual clock. Decades later, his youngest grandchild started this clock in motion.

                        

      I'd never heard of Olsen's clock before seeing it. We went to the Copenhagen City Hall because the building is gorgeous (and free) but from that day, I most remember this clock. 

     I was immediately taken by the lovely, golden brass works visible all around through the clear case. Like a sculpture, it draws one around and around. Olsen planned for the works to be covered and only have the faces visible. Whatever was he thinking? 

     After staring at it, I started reading the signs. What staggered me more than the beauty was the fact that it takes 25,753 years for one of the small gears to make a complete revolution while the fastest gear turns once every 10 seconds. 

      Since the clock was started on December 15, 1955, the accuracy of this is still untested but think of the precision of the works where one part revolves a complete turn in 25,753 years. Agog? Right?

     Jens Olsen was a locksmith in 1897 when he became inspired to design and build an astronomical clock. He learned clockmaking and built and repaired grandfather clocks, pocket watches, and binoculars while, in his spare time, he designed the world clock. Here are some details:

My favorite face - the planets

     Olsen made plans for the clock working alone until 1928 when  astronomer Elis Stromgren joined the project. Drawings for the clock were made between 1934 and 1936 but the production was delayed by fundraising and WWWII. Finally, the clock was built between 1943 and 1955- a portion of which included the Nazi occupation of Denmark.

      The clock has 12 movements.

     There are 15,448 parts.

     In spite of it starting the same year as the atomic clock was invented, it is mechanical and needs to be wound each week.

     Displays include lunar and solar eclipses as well as the positions of the planets and their moons. It shows “true solar time,” the Julian period, the date in the Gregorian calendar, and time zones as they were introduced in 1884.

     

      The city of Copenhagen helped to finance the construction of the clock. It became a symbol of Danish craftsmanship.

     The case was designed by Gunnar Billmann Petersen. He chose to create a transparent case and feature the workings as well as the faces. Good choice.

     While we live in a world where technology becomes obsolete before things are delivered and packages opened, this clock is meant to tell the time and date for thousands of years. The sign at City Hall states, “The World Clock…will still be able to show the starry sky above City Hall, the date when Easter Falls and the time in Singapore.”