Riva del Garda’s Historic Clock: A Century of Silence and Revival Efforts
In the bell tower of the Inviolata Church, there is a clock that, according to Eddo Colorio in the latest annuario of the local Sat, probably holds a record: that of the least functioning. Over the past hundred years, it has been at least 86 years immobile and silent.
At the beginning of the century, the clock was working and was almost in the countryside. Around the 1910s — though there are no direct testimonies — the mechanism became stopped. The following years were filled with more important matters.
Only in 1946 did Elidio Patuzzi, a municipal employee and a pioneering DIY enthusiast (who built violins after work), decide that the clock should resume marking the hours for a city that was gradually waking up. He found the right support in Dr. Bruno Alberti, chief of medicine at what was then the hospital and the first mayor of Riva democratica.
Clock Repair and the End of the Attempt
The project was extremely complex. The mechanism was completely rusted, the gears encrusted, the balances coated with dust, the wires eaten away or missing. The clock had, and probably still has, the rare specialty of ringing only the six o’clock hour: after striking six at six o’clock, it restarts and hits one at seven, two at eight, six at noon, one at one p.m., one at seven p.m., and so on.
The mechanism is driven by weights: three loads, side by side. As they descend, they pull on some large marble cylinders. Near the immediately superior landing, where the bell chamber opens, (the current two bronze bells — these ancient ones confiscated from Austria for wartime needs, were recast in 1936, using war spoils. This is indicated by an inscription around the bell) the broken wire that moved the hammer for the hour strikes ascends.
Elidio Patuzzi succeeded in restarting the clock, although Eddo Colorio suggests that the effort was too costly for him. Already in poor health, drafts and the exertions of climbing up and down the bell tower’s stairs — now covered with pigeon droppings that dominate the tower — made him ill.
Determined to finish his work, he didn’t even adhere to the convalescence prescribed by doctors. He died on March 1, 1946, at the age of 47. The clock continued for a couple of years then fell silent.
Perhaps the silence was also caused by the fact that, to wind it up, there was no other method than climbing — every blessed day sent by the Lord to earth — the narrow ramps of the internal stairs (now covered with the droppings of the pigeons that now rule the tower) and pulling the weights up.
In the coming years, when the restoration of the Inviolata will have preserved the most important elements — frescoes, stuccoes, altars, choir, and sacristy — someone will also attend to the bell tower, including the clock.
The clock face remains, unique and solitary on the southern facade, repeated inside the tower. Elidio Patuzzi’s dream could come true, but perhaps the mechanism should be transferred to the museum, where it belongs.