The Peter and Paul Cathedral clock has chimed every 15
minutes for 219 years.
But few people know of the long and sometimes bitter history behind the enchanting sounds of the bells.
The first chiming-clock was placed in the wooden tower of the original wooden Peter and Paul church, built in 1703-1704.
But it didn't last long. Modernization swept it and the old tower away in 1714 when construction began anew on a stone cathedral.
Peter the Great, in the Netherlands on his last tour of Europe, in 1715, bought a new clock for the rapidly rising cathedral. He was so impatient to have the clock installed that it was placed in the tower even before the cathedral was completed.
In 1724 a Silesian organ master, Iohann Christian Ferster, was invited to St Petersburg by Peter. Ferster arranged for the clock's chimes to be provided with the ability to perform different melodies. This kind of clock, known as a "chiming-clock" or "clockspiel," was very popular in 17th century Europe. Each bell was tuned to a certain tone and connected to the clock's mechanism and a keyboard.
Ferster stayed on until his death in 1750, tending the clock and the clockspiel, and teaching students how to play the mechanism and to compose music for it.
But diaster struck in 1756 when a fire gutted the wooden spire of Peter and Paul Cathedral destroying the unique clock.
Another Dutch clock was chosen to replace it. In August 1760 the renowned master clock-maker Barnardus Fredericos Oortkras arrived in St Petersburg with the new clock and clockspiel, little knowing how fateful his journey would be.
When he arrived he was shocked to find that a new belfry had yet to be constructed to hold his fine clock. He waited two years in St Petersburg, at his own expense, with the clock and the five Dutch craftsmen he had brought to erect it. What's more, a local rival clock-maker who had missed out on the contract intrigued against him, accusing him of laziness, negligence and incompetence, negligence.
Oortkras ended up bankrupt. He was forced to sell his house and then thrown into debtors' prison, from which he was rescued by the Dutch embassy. Exhausted and destitute, Oortkras pressed on with the clock's construction.
But his jealous rival continued his attacks. Oortkras had a nervous breakdown and died in Many 1767, without ever seeing his clock mounted in the new belfry.
It would be 1776 before it was finally placed there, by the Viennese clock-maker Rediger, who noted as he set Oortkras' clock in place that it "is an honor to its creator."
With the clock came a bronze barrel two meters (six feet)in diameter, perforated with 121,200 special musical tone holes, allowing it to perform complicated melodies. It was provided with hand and foot controls connected by copper wires to 101 hammers and the 38 bells, which encompassed a three-octave range.
That fact that for its first 64 years of operation it never needed repair is testament to its craftsmanship. It is this 1776 mechanism that still chimes to this day.
After Rediger's death in 1781, he was replaced by Iohann Strafser, the first of a line of famous St Petersburg clock masters. He tended the mechanism until his death in 1815.
The last major changed to the clock was made in 1861, when Strafser's grandson, Alexander Strasser, added one more melody, the march from Wagner's opera Tangeiser.
Since then the clock has remained largely unchanged, chiming out its notes every 15 minutes through rain and shine, war and revolution.