The clock towers of Rakitovo

My dear friends, allow me in this travel post to introduce you to not one, but two impressive clock towers.

The clock tower with two dials in Rakitovo, Bulgaria

Both are located in the lovely, green and so charming Rhodope town of Rakitovo.

How to get here?

Rakitovo is a small, picturesque town located in Southern Bulgaria, in the western part of the Rhodope Mountains and in the southeastern part of the Chepina Valley. The town is the administrative center of the Rakitovo Municipality, Pazardzhik District and is located a little more than 10 kilometers southeast of the city of Velingrad.

As soon as you enter the city, if you are traveling from Velingrad or Pazardzhik, you will see the first "clock tower".

The quotation marks probably gave me away that this is actually a mock-up

This is a mock-up of the actual clock tower with two dials in Rakitovo and a symbol of the city.

The clock tower with a working clock mechanism was built on the slope of the Brdo hill in the eastern part of Rakitovo.

It was built in 1872 with donations from two local residents - Veli Haji Musa Efendi and his son - Hafez Hussein Efendi.

The builder of the tower was called Malik Çelebi. A plaque on one of the walls mentions this fact.

The tower itself is 18.6 meters high, and its walls are 0.8 meters thick. The tower consists of two main parts - a stone body with a square base, the corners of which are beveled and give it an octagonal shape. The lower part of the wooden superstructure is octagonal, sheathed with boards. It ends with a conical roof with sheet metal. The wooden belts are made of aspen and are placed every meter.