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Herceg Novi · The gate of the Old Town

Sahat kula: The Gate That Became a Clock

Sixteen metres of Ottoman gatehouse with a Russian bell, a Black Madonna and two dates that cannot both be right.

Reading time ~8 min7 source-linked referencesInterpretive phase drawing, not a survey42.4534° N · 18.5367° E

How to read this article

Archaeologists record a building as a phase plan: every construction period gets its own colour, and the building is drawn as the sum of its phases. That convention is the colour system of this whole page. Wherever you see one of these colours — in the drawing, the timeline, the annotations, the rule beside a paragraph — it tells you who built that.

  • Ottoman1667–1687
  • Venetian1687–1797
  • Austria · Russia · France1797–1814
  • Austro-Hungarian1814–1918
  • Yugoslav & Montenegrin1918–today

Who held it, drawn to scale · 359 years

1667today

The Ottoman slice is the thinnest here — twenty years. The tower was finished in 1667 and the Ottomans lost the town in 1687. Almost the whole life of this building has been spent under somebody else’s flag.

The phase drawing

A doorway with a clock on it

The Sahat kula is drawn as a straight elevation, because that is how the town meets it: face-on, at the top of the steps, with a hole through the middle you are meant to walk through. Scroll to build it up.

Interpretive phase elevation of the Sahat kulaThe clock tower drawn face-on: the dashed outline of the medieval gate that stood here first, the 1667 Ottoman tower with a crenellated top, an arched passage through its base and a building inscription, the bell hung inside, the clock face, the Black Madonna relief kept within, and the Old Town houses that grew up on either side.

The medieval gate that stood here first, drawn dashed.

Before 1667

A gate stood here already

The tower was not put on an empty site. Local accounts place it on an older medieval gate of the town, from the time of Tvrtko I — the same foundation that produced Forte Mare. The Ottomans replaced the door, not the idea.

1667 · Ottoman

Sixteen metres, and a hole through the middle

Built in 1667 and carrying an Arabic inscription that records its commissioning. Sixteen metres high, it served as the main city gate through the rest of Ottoman rule — everything and everyone entering the Old Town passed under it. A mosque stood beside it.

1753 · The bell

A bell arrives from Russia

A bell dated 1753 hangs in the tower and is attributed locally to the Russian empress Catherine the Great. It is still there. The attribution has a problem, which the corrections below deal with.

The clock

The tower gets the name it goes by

Mechanical clock faces were fitted on several sides. Under Ottoman rule they had marked the times of the daily prayers; afterwards they simply told the town the time, and gave the building the name everyone now uses — the clock tower.

Inside

The Black Madonna

The tower holds a relief known as the Crna Bogorodica, the Black Madonna — described by the municipality as a wooden figure of the Mother of God. A Christian image kept inside an Ottoman gatehouse is a fair summary of this town.

1995 · Today

An electric movement, and a place on the flag

The original clock ran until the mid-1990s and was replaced with an electric one in 1995. The town grew up tight against both sides of the tower, and put it on its coat of arms and its flag. It is the one building here that is a symbol rather than a ruin.

The story

It is a door before it is a clock

Everyone photographs the Sahat kula for the clock, which it did not originally have, and almost nobody notices that they are standing in front of a fortified gate — the only way into a walled town, sixteen metres of Ottoman masonry with a hole cut through the bottom.

It went up in 1667, and carries an Arabic inscription recording that it was raised by order of the sultan by one Mustafa Aga, described as a servant in the sultan’s mosque. It was not built on an empty site: local accounts place it on an older medieval gate of Tvrtko I’s town, the same foundation that produced Forte Mare. The Ottomans replaced the door, not the idea of one.

For the rest of Ottoman rule this was the main city gate. A mosque stood beside it. Clock faces on several sides marked the times of the daily prayers — which is how a gatehouse ends up named after its timepiece.

The Sahat kula lit at night at the top of a broad flight of stone steps, its crenellated top and clock face glowing above the roofs, with café tables and umbrellas filling the square in the foreground.
  • The crenellated top. Sixteen metres up. The merlons are a fortification detail on what is, by function, a doorway — this was the main gate of a walled town, and it was built to look like it.
  • The clock face. Mechanical faces were fitted on several sides. Under Ottoman rule they marked the times of prayer; the movement behind this one has been electric since 1995.
  • The passage through the base. The dark arch is the point. Everything entering the Old Town came through here, and still does. The Black Madonna relief is kept inside the tower above it.
  • The steps. Herceg Novi is built on a slope, and the gate sits at the top of a stair. An attacker coming up these steps arrives out of breath, below the defenders, and one at a time.
  • The square below. What was the approach to a fortified gate is now the town’s main café terrace. The tower is on the coat of arms and the flag; it is the building Herceg Novi uses to mean itself.
The Sahat kula at night, above the steps from Trg Nikole Đurkovića. Photograph by Sailko, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Select a marker to read the annotation.

Two problems

The dates that cannot both be right

This building comes with two stories that are repeated everywhere in Herceg Novi, and both of them have a chronological hole in the middle. Neither is a reason to disbelieve the objects — the inscription is on the tower and the bell is in it — but they are a good reason to be careful about the labels.

Which sultan?

Local sources render the inscription as recording the tower’s construction in 1667 by order of Sultan Mahmud. The sultan reigning in 1667 was Mehmed IV, who held the throne from 1648 to 1687. The first Ottoman sultan named Mahmud came to power in 1730, sixty-three years after the date carved on the building. One of the two — the name or the year — is not being read correctly.

Which empress?

The bell is dated 1753 and is attributed to the Russian empress Catherine II. Catherine did not become empress until 9 July 1762. In 1753 she was Grand Duchess Catherine Alekseyevna, the wife of the heir, with no throne and no obvious reason to be sending bells to a Venetian town on the Adriatic.

There are ordinary explanations for both — a bell cast in 1753 could easily have been given later, and inscriptions get miscopied and mistranslated across three centuries and two alphabets. What there is not, at least in the sources available here, is a resolution. So the objects are real, the dates are on them, and the attributions should be quoted rather than asserted.

1667 → today

The full timeline

Dated events only. Where sources disagree, the conflict is stated in the entry rather than resolved silently.

siege or conquestbuilding workeverything else

Ottoman

1667–1687

  • before 1667

    A medieval gate on the site

    Local accounts place the tower on an earlier town gate from the time of Tvrtko I.

  • 1667

    The tower is built

    Sixteen metres high, with an Arabic inscription recording its commissioning by Mustafa Aga on the sultan’s order. It serves as the main city gate; a mosque stands beside it.

  • 30 Sep 1687

    Venice takes the town

    Twenty years after the gate is finished.

The bell

1753

  • 1753

    The bell

    A bell dated 1753, attributed locally to Catherine the Great — who did not become empress until 1762. It hangs in the tower to this day.

Austro-Hungarian

1814–1918

  • 19th c.

    The clock becomes the identity

    Mechanical faces on several sides. The building is known by its clock rather than its gate.

Yugoslav & Montenegrin

1918–today

  • 1995

    An electric movement

    The original clock, which had run for generations, is replaced.

  • today

    On the coat of arms and the flag

    The tower is the symbol Herceg Novi uses for itself, and still the way into the Old Town.

Corrections

What the internet gets wrong

These claims circulate widely online and do not survive checking. If you have read about Sahat kula elsewhere, you have probably met at least one of them.

Chronology

“Built in 1667 by order of Sultan Mahmud.”

The sultan reigning in 1667 was Mehmed IV (1648–1687). The first Sultan Mahmud took the throne in 1730. Either the year or the name in the inscription is being misread — quote the inscription, don’t assert the attribution.

Chronology

“A bell given by Catherine the Great in 1753.”

Catherine II became empress on 9 July 1762. In 1753 she was Grand Duchess. The bell and its date are real; the donor attribution as usually stated cannot be.

Often missed

It is a gate, not a monument.

The Sahat kula is the entrance to the Old Town and still functions as one. Guides routinely describe it as a clock tower and skip what it was built to do.

Sources and image record

Dates and interpretations are tied to the archive and research sources below. Where they conflict, the conflict is named in the text rather than smoothed over.

Herceg Novi Then and NowForte MareKanli KulaŠpanjolaCitadelaMamulaArzaTajno brdo
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