It's called an astronomical clock because it keeps time and tracks the position of the sun, moon and other planets. It chimes every 15 minutes and has little statues that perform different actions depending on the time. The cathedral is also very tall. It's over 450 feet! To help you understand how tall that is, the Statue of Liberty in the New York Harbor is only about 300 feet tall. In other words, this cathedral is over 150 feet taller, and was built hundreds of years earlier!
Now Ms. Litman's students were wondering why this cathedral only has one tower instead of two. It nearly looks lopsided! The reason is that, when the cathedral was first built, it had two towers. In fact, if you look closely, it still does. In the 1300s, one of the builders decided to connect the two towers, which meant that they didn't look like separate towers anymore. So, they then decided to add the large addition on the left side. However, our tour guide said the cathedral didn't add the tower on the right, because they ran out of money and the soil underneath the cathedral could not hold any more weight. They were worried the whole building would collapse, so they stopped further construction. In the last 30 years, modern architects and engineers realized that the building was in danger of collapsing, so they had to reinforce and support the cathedral underground – using more modern techniques. So there are two towers, but the one with the spire (the pointy bit) was built before the architects realized the whole project was too heavy.
One last thing. Molly and I returned to the Cathedral this afternoon and paid eight Euros each to walk more than 300 steps to the top of the cathedral.
