Grande-Île de Strasbourg
Canal-laced medieval island of half-timbered houses beneath a Gothic cathedral's astronomical clock.
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About this audio guide
This guide to the Grande-Île in Strasbourg starts with the rooster that crows above the cathedral's marching apostles, and the older, silent gilded rooster from 1352 now kept in a glass case nearby. It follows Jean-Baptiste Schwilgué, a self-taught engineer who grew up watching an earlier Renaissance clock fall broken and useless, and who spent years studying old blueprints on his own before the cathedral finally gave him the job in 1838. You'll hear how he trained thirty workers and chose to build an entirely new movement rather than patch the old one, one built to track centuries of Easters and leap years. Stand here at solar noon and listen for the apostles filing past, and the four ages of life marching toward Death above them.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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