Campanar de Reus, Gothic bell tower in Reus, Spain.
The Campanar de Reus is a hexagonal Gothic bell tower attached to the Prioral de Sant Pere, 12 metres wide and 62 metres tall, with seven floors covered by ribbed vaults. It is crowned by a pinnacle with crests and surrounded by smaller pinnacles. Two spiral staircases lead up: the first serves the lower empty rooms, and the second, narrower one climbs to the top gallery after 214 steps.
The tower was commissioned in 1512 to the masters Font and Benet Otger of Lyon, and construction began in 1520 next to the Prioral de Sant Pere. The church was consecrated in 1543, and the bell tower was completed in 1566 under master Domènec Sarobé. In the 19th century, during the Carlist Wars, it served as a military watchtower.
The bells gave the tower a civic role: they rang for deaths, festivals, fires and attacks, and from the 15th century were rung at the start of storms, a custom a newspaper denounced in 1860. Since 2000 the Reus scout groups Misericòrdia and MontsantCim have been the city's official bell-ringers, wearing green or maroon shirts and scout neckerchiefs.
The tower is reached from the church choir or through the bell-ringer's house, entering from Fossar Vell; both routes lead to a narrow spiral staircase. The climb to the top gallery totals 214 steps, and the final stretch is the tightest. The sixth floor has a gallery that circles the whole tower.
On the sixth floor, next to the Sant Bernat bell, stood until 1936 the "Matraques", a wooden and iron device struck during Holy Week to make noise in place of the silenced bells. The tower also served as a military watchtower during the 19th-century Carlist wars, signalling dangers to the city with flags.
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