Lier

Lier is a compact town inside a ring of water where the Grote and Kleine Nete meet, with a beguinage of small brick houses around lanes and a chapel, a fifteenth-century belfry on the town hall, and the church of Saint Gummarus with sixteenth-century glass. Its particular oddity is the Zimmer Tower: Louis Zimmer, a clockmaker and astronomer with no formal training, built a Jubilee Clock into a surviving town gate in 1930 with thirteen dials showing the tides, the moon, the zodiac, the seasons and the equation of time, and later added a Wonder Clock with fifty-seven more dials, some turning once every twenty-five thousand years. Both are still running and are shown with an explanation of the mechanisms.

What you actually see

• Zimmer's Jubilee Clock - thirteen astronomical dials in a town gate.
• The Wonder Clock - fifty-seven further dials, some turning over millennia.
• The beguinage - brick houses and lanes behind a gate.
• Sixteenth-century glass - the windows of Saint Gummarus church.

When to go

April to October. Half a day. The Zimmer Tower and the belfry have set opening hours and close on some weekdays. The beguinage is open ground and walkable at any time.

Honest expectations

It is small and half a day is enough. Museum opening is limited and varies by day. Explanations of the clocks are mostly in Dutch. There is not much beyond the clock, the beguinage and the church.

Nearby

Mechelen is west; Antwerp lies north-west.