On Friday, March 10, 2023, the Trenčín Museum in Trenčín installed a reconstructed county baroque clock from 1735 at the Trenčín Castle. Thanks to the cooperation with Zoltán Lancz, a watchmaker from Trenčín, these clocks came to life after decades of silence. You can hear their precise ticking in Barbora's palace.

According to the available data, the county baroque clock was originally made as part of the new equipment of the County House in Trenčín in 1735. As a collection item, the Trenčín Museum in Trenčín acquired it in 1972. For several decades, the empty clock box of the clock was displayed at the Trenčín Castle, it was missing however, the clockwork and the case itself were damaged. In 2020, the Trenčín Museum in Trenčín began to restore the clock case, and thanks to the professional work of internal and external restorers, the clocks were restored to their former form. The total cost of their reconstruction was €4,500.

Their current reconstructed form is approximated by Mgr. Vladimír Pinďák, historian of the Trenčín Museum in Trenčín: "When carrying out sounding research, it was found that originally the darker parts of the cabinet and the lantern had a white or whitish appearance and were gilded. Later, an imitation of marble was created, and in the last phase, the box was painted with a varnish that darkened over time. During the restoration, the varnish, applied probably in the 1930s, was removed and the restoration of the second surface finish was started. The original first phase of the appearance was preserved only in the torsal state, therefore we decided to restore the appearance of the watch after the second surface treatment.

The clocks got their "heart" back thanks to the cooperation with local watchmaker Zoltán Lancz, who breathed life into them again. He installed them at Trenčia Castle together with his son, Oliver Lancz, and as they revealed, their grandfather was already involved in the watchmaking trade. Rare baroque clocks were thus truly in the hands of professionals. The peculiarity of these clocks nowadays is, as stated by master Zoltán Lancz, that they do not need any electricity for their movement. The movement of the hour hands is ensured by an ingenious mechanism, and so that they do not stop, it is necessary to stretch them every two days.

Zoltán Lancz, a watchmaker from Trenčín, offered us an original baroque clockwork that he restored, which we of course agreed to. The master watchmaker installed a baroque clockwork in the hitherto empty reconstructed lantern, and the clock is ticking again and showing the exact time. The rarity of this clockwork is the fact that part of one of the hands was made from a coin at the end of the 18th century somewhere in the region of northeastern Germany," said the director of the Trenčín Museum in Trenčín, Mgr. Peter Martinisko.

The clockwork is fully functional and visitors to Trenčín Castle can listen to its operation directly at Trenčín Castle in Barbora's Palace from Saturday, March 11, 2023. The clock mechanism will be partly visible through the glass door of the lantern. The clock case itself reaches a respectable height of 320 cm when connected to the lantern.

Source: Trenčín Museum in Trenčín