The Clock Tower — Attraction in Tbilisi

In 2010 Rezo Gabriadze built a unique clock tower next to marionette theatre in Tbilisi old town. Every hour an angel comes out with a small hammer to ring the bell.

There is a small puppet theatre inside the tower and twice a day at noon and at 7pm you can see a show – “The Circle of Life”.

Rezo decorated the tower with hundreds of tiles which he designed himself and the it instantly became a major architectural attraction of Tbilisi. People often call it the Tower with clock or The Tower with angel.

Rezo Gabriadze speaking about the Tower and its construction:

When the construction began, I found myself, as if by a miracle of the time machine, in the faraway and beautiful Byzantine Empire of the 10th – 13th centuries. The tower was to naturally blend with the surrounding space and time.

My table was piled with books on the architecture of Georgia, Byzantium, Italy and Russia…Books on the decorative ornaments, generously left by Byzantium for the world to use.

I made a trip to the Dark Ages and I must say that they were not nearly as ‘dark’ as we often think of them. And even if that period was dark, who are we to pass the judgment? We’d better be mute on the subject.

But who would do the building? Where are good builders to be found? In the end, one came out of a wall. The other stepped off a bus. The first was called Otar (Otar Magrakvelidze), a man of my age over 70, one of those people whose face in a group photograph is often half cropped because they stand at the side. He had spent 50 years on different construction sites in Georgia, and had been a builder all those years. What a beautiful career! We made friends with him, and still are, and will be forever!

The name of the other man was Avtandil (Avtandil Lezhava). Judging by his character, his age could have been between 1,300 and 1,500. Reticent and eluding, he would return your glance with a quiet subtle smile of his elusive eyes, without focusing on you for long , and then would shift his gaze to a rain-pipe. Phrases of more than five words depressed him. He joined us after he had finished the construction of a village church in western Georgia. He arrived with a bundle and a bag of tools , just like in the 12th century. His wife brought the rest of his belongings, quietly shaking her head.

I was assisted by engineers, designers and architects – Zurab Dzhaparidze, Gela Djangirashvili, Archil Dzhaparidze, Kote Odishvili and others. They translated my drawings and ideas into modern, understandable construction language. I am extremely grateful...

The leaning tower of Tbilisi is one of the city’s most unusual buildings. Tucked into a side street of old town, it truly is a bizarre structure, with a tower on the perpetual brink of falling down, and only a steel beam holding the tower in place. A huge clock sits in the middle of the disheveled tower, with a leaning column on its side. While an incredibly odd sight, it's not an old structure. It is a modern tower, attached to the puppet theatre of renowned puppeteer Rezo Gabriadze. He himself is the brainchild behind the structure, as well as the building to its side, which houses the actual theatre. Gabriadze built the theatre himself over a timespan of thirty years, reusing old pieces from abandoned structures of the old town, and from buildings destroyed following a major earthquake. The weird clock tower was added in 2011, after a four-year construction phase.

It's hard not to fall in love with the playful, naive architecture of the tower. This is especially true when on the hour, a window opens at the small balcony at the top, and a mannequin of an angel strikes the bell. Below the clock, a screen opens and shows the circle of life: boy meets girl, marriage, childbirth and funeral.

Aside from being a magnificent and truly unique structure, the tower is also an impressive statement against soulless urban modernization, and the semi-identical glass-and-steel structures that continue to pop up in nearly every city on the planet – including Tbilisi. While modern structures continue to appear in Tbilisi, large parts of the old town are in a shocking state of disrepair, and while a lot of reconstruction work has been carried out, the city’s government seems to be more eager to set modern landmarks than preserve...

It is also called Leaning Tower of Tbilisi It plays on the hour every hour promptly

The charmingly disheveled clock tower of Tbilisi's puppet theater.

Tucked into a side street of old town, it truly is a bizarre structure, with a tower on the perpetual brink of falling down, and only a steel beam holding the tower in place. A huge clock sits in the middle of the disheveled tower, with a leaning column on its side modern tower, attached to the puppet theatre of renowned puppeteer Rezo Gabriadze. He himself is the brainchild behind the structure, as well as the building to its side, which houses the actual theatre. Gabriadze built the theatre himself over a timespan of thirty years, reusing old pieces from abandoned structures of the old town, and from buildings destroyed following a major earthquake. The weird clock tower was added in 2011, after a four-year construction phase. It's hard not to fall in love with the playful, naive architecture of the tower. This is especially true when on the hour, a window opens at the small balcony at the top, and a mannequin of an angel strikes the bell. Below the clock, a screen opens and shows the circle of life: boy meets girl, marriage, childbirth...