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Key information
Bell tower
Introduction
Andreu Juliá began in 1381 the construction of this emblematic monument of the city of Valencia.
New Bell Tower
For many centuries it was called “Campanar Nou” (New Bell Tower) o “Cathedral Bell Tower”, to differentiate it from “Campanar Vell” (Old Bell Tower), a tower with a square plan and Romanesque style, located on Barchilla Street, and of which there are few remains of the walls.
After Andreu Julià, Josep Franch and Pere Balaguer were its successive architects.
The Micalet Tower
Little by little its name was transformed into “The Micalet Tower”, due to the great bell of the hours, which has served to name the whole tower by metonymy.
An exempt tower
Originally it was a standalone tower that was joined to the Cathedral at the end of the 15th century when the nave was extended.
Access to the tower
It has access through an angular portal adorned with archivolts and its perimeter is equal to its height. Work of the master builder of the Cathedral Francesc Baldomar, it is soberly decorated on the outside by the prismatic buttresses of the edges and the fine moldings that mark the different levels of the floors.
Three sections
The first segment is solid, leaving only the helical stairwell; the second segment has a vaulted enclosure, which is the old “Prison” or Asylum of the Cathedral with a single exterior window; the third segment is the “Place of the Bell ringer”, another vaulted enclosure similar to the previous one, although larger and with two windows.
The top floor
The upper floor is the bell room open by eight windows, seven of them occupied by the bells.
The eighth corresponds to the spiral staircase, which becomes narrower from here.
Antoni Dalmau’s project
In 1425 the tower up to the terrace was already completed, and the needle project conceived by Antoni Dalmau, and which is preserved in the Municipal Historical Museum, did not prosper.
The bell of the hours
The bell of the hours hung from a wooden structure, located on stone pillars, similar to the one existing in many other bell towers of the Crown of Aragon.
The current belfry is an attachment built between 1660 and 1736.
It had an elegant fretwork cresting or “apitrador” which served as a crown, and which was razed in the 18th century., being replaced first by a wooden railing and in the 19th century by a metal railing until the restoration of 1983, when a stone one was built, similar to the original one.
Also discover
The bells
