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.

History

Little is recorded of Lier before Saint Gummarus, who was born in the 7th century and died on 11 October 714; the town was made an oppidum in 1194 and received municipal rights in 1212, and its beguinage was founded in 1258. Offered a university or a cattle market by Duke John II of Brabant in the 14th century, Lier is said to have chosen the market, which earned its people the nickname sheep heads, while the university went to Leuven in 1425, and in 1496 Philip the Handsome married Joanna of Castile here (Wikipedia, Lier, Belgium).

What to look for

• 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.

Good to know

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.

Key facts