Cape Town City Hall

This guide to Cape Town City Hall centers on its Edwardian clock tower, built in 1905 by the same firm that made Big Ben's mechanism, and the day sometime around 2010 when its bells simply stopped striking. It follows the fifteen silent years that followed, as hundreds of thousands of people passed beneath a landmark clock that could no longer do the one thing a clock is for, and the engineer and horologist eventually called in to look at it. Stand still a moment and listen for the bell above you.