A belltower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell towers, often part of a municipal building, an educational establishment, or a tower built specifically to house a carillon. Church bell towers often incorporate clocks, and secular towers usually do, as a public service. The term campanile, deriving from the Italian campanile, which in turn derives from campana, meaning "bell", is synonymous with bell tower; though in English usage campanile tends to be used to refer to a free standing bell tower. A bell tower may also in some traditions be called a belfry, though this term may also refer specifically to the substructure that houses the bells and the ringers rather than the complete tower. The tallest free-standing bell tower in the world, high, is the Mortegliano Bell Tower, in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, Italy.
Purpose
Bells are rung from a tower to enable them to be heard at a distance. Church bells can signify the time for worshippers to go to church for a communal service, and can be an indication of a time to pray, without worshippers coming to the church. They are also rung on special occasions such as a wedding, or a funeral service. In some religious traditions they are used within the liturgy of the church service to signify to people that a particular part of the service has been reached. A bell tower may have a single bell, or a collection of bells which are tuned to a common scale. They may be stationary and chimed, rung randomly by swinging through a small arc, or swung through a full circle to enable the high degree of control of English change ringing. They may house a carillon or chimes, in which the bells are sounded by hammers connected via cables to a keyboard. These can be found in many churches and secular buildings in Europe and America including college and university campuses. A variety of electronic devices exist to simulate the sound of bells, but any substantial tower in which a considerable sum of money has been invested will generally have a real set of bells. from Moscow Kremlin, built in 1508 has an exconjuratory in its bell tower Some churches have an exconjuratory in the bell tower, a space where ceremonies were conducted to ward off weather-related calamities, like storms and excessive rain. The main bell tower of the Cathedral of Murcia has four. In Christianity, many Anglican, Catholic, and Lutheran churches ring their bells from belltowers three times a day, at 6a.m., noon, and 6p.m., summoning the Christian faithful to recite the Lord’s Prayer, or the Angelus, a prayer recited in honour of the Incarnation of God. In addition, most Christian denominations ring church bells to call the faithful to worship, signalling the start of a mass or service of worship. In many historic Christian churches, church bells are also rung during the processions of Candlemas and Palm Sunday; traditionally, church bells are silent from Maundy Thursday through the Easter Vigil. The Christian tradition of the ringing of church bells from a belltower is analogous to Islamic tradition of the adhan from a minaret. Old bell towers which are no longer used for their original purpose may be kept for their historic or architectural value, though in countries with a strong campanological tradition they often continue to have the bells rung.
History
Europe
In AD 400, Paulinus of Nola introduced church bells into the Christian Church. By the 11th century, bells housed in belltowers became commonplace. at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana Historic bell towers exist throughout Europe. The Irish round towers are thought to have functioned in part as bell towers. Famous medieval European examples include Bruges, Ypres, Ghent. Perhaps the most famous European free-standing bell tower, however, is the so-called "Leaning Tower of Pisa", which is the campanile of the Duomo di Pisa in Pisa, Italy. In 1999 thirty-two Belgian belfries were added to the UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites. In 2005 this list was extended with one Belgian and twenty-three Northern French belfries and is since known as Belfries of Belgium and France. Most of these were attached to civil buildings, mainly city halls, as symbols of the greater power the cities in the region got in the Middle Ages; a small number of buildings not connected with a belfry, such as bell towers of—or with their—churches, also occur on this same list. In the Middle Ages, cities sometimes kept their important documents in belfries. Not all are on a large scale; the "bell" tower of Katúň, in Slovakia, is typical of the many more modest structures that were once common in country areas. Archaic wooden bell towers survive adjoining churches in Lithuania and as well as in some parts of Poland. In Orthodox Eastern Europe bell ringing also have a strong cultural significance, and churches were constructed with bell towers.
China
Bell towers are common in China and the countries of related cultures. They may appear both as part of a temple complex and as an independent civic building, often paired with a drum tower, as well as in local church buildings. Among the best known examples are the Bell Tower of Beijing and the Bell Tower of Xi'an.
