The amazing astronomical clock of the Cathedral of Lyon
In the Vieux Lyon, the old part of the French town, resides the second largest Renaissance area in all of Europe, smaller only than Venice. Right there, next to the river Saône, is the Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Lyon, and it’s amazing astronomical clock.
The cathedral is located on the Place Saint-Jean and its construction started in 1180 and was completed in 1476. It was build over a cathedral group, which was a complex of buildings that consisted in two cathedrals, one for worship and the other for education. This was common practice in the 4th and 5th centuries in France. There is a 5th century text that describes this old construction.
Ruins of the old cathedral group were excavated in the 1970’s.
The old cathedral group was restored multiple times with several parts added. Right next to the current cathedral are the archaeological ruins of the old buildings. The rest is under it.
A statue of San John the Baptist baptizing Christ was placed in front of the holy building in 1884. This piece of art was authored by Jean-Marie Bonnassieux..
The Place Saint-Jean is a cute little square to which the cathedral faces. On one side you have little old shops with a lot of Little Prince items, because the author was a native of Lyon. Along the street to the left are several restaurants that serve local traditional food.
The astronomical clock
This fabulous piece of engineering is one of the oldest surviving machines from modern times. A clock was first installed in the church in 1393, then another more modern version in 1572 by master clockmaker Hughes Levet, which was destroyed in a raid. The current clock was built in 1662 by Ambert native Guillaume Nourissier.
The clock is the most impressive structure in the whole Cathedral.
The clock has several dials. The upper dial on the front face is the astrolabe, where the sun and moon revolve around the earth, from the time of geocentrism, when people believed the sun went around our planet. It also shows the phases of the moon and the rising of the stars on the horizon of the French city.
On the very top is an automaton which shows images according to the day of the week: Christ rising on Sunday, Death on Monday (because they’ve known for centuries Monday’s suck), Saint John the Baptist on Tuesday, Saint Stephen on Wednesday, Christ with a chalice on Thursday, a child with a cross on Friday, and Mary on Saturday.
On the right side, not shown in the picture above is a dial that shows the minutes. It’s just a dial with numbers from 1 to 60.
The “perpetual” calendar works for 66 years. I had to visit exactly when they were setting it up for the next 66.
The front part there is a “perpetual” calendar that works for 66 years and then needs to be updated. It ran with this configuration from 1954 to 2017, when it broke down 2 years shy of competing its cycle. It shows the day, month, year and a little pointy finger indicated the holiday.
There are plans to restore the clock in 2020 and update it so it can run one thousand years without needing another fix.
The finger points at the holiday of the day. Check out October 6th, Saint Bruno’s day.
A statue of Saint John the Baptist inside the cathedral is like “Who’s up next to be baptized?”.
I found this thing interesting. In my research I couldn’t figure out what it is. It looks like a type of pedestal or something.