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Sometimes a simple roadside curiosity turns into an unexpected adventure. In this case, the culprit was a 160-foot clock tower in Berne, Indiana. All I wanted to do was watch the little glockenspiel show that comes out of the doors near its base. That seemed reasonable enough. As it turns out, though, timing a Swiss-inspired clock tower in rural Indiana is much harder than it sounds.

Berne dates to 1852, when Mennonites from Münsterberg in Switzerland came to Adams County¹. The community was established around a Grand Rapids and Indiana railroad line in 1871, and a post office opened the following year². Today known as the “Furniture Capital of Indiana³,” Berne embraces its Swiss heritage: most of its buildings feature traditional architecture including, for a time, its McDonald’s! 

Berne’s residents got the idea to build a clock tower in 2001 to commemorate the city’s sesquicentennial. It took a while, but the $3.5 million⁴ tower -160 feet tall and thirty-two feet wide⁵– was dedicated in 2010⁶. A tribute to the Zytglogge in Bern, Switzerland⁷, it matches the height of the 1872 Adams County Courthouse thirteen miles north.

I was a freshman in college when the Berne clock tower and its habitat, Muensterberg Plaza, were put in place. My roommate worked with a guy from Berne. When I casually asked him about its new landmark, the friend flew into an inspired tirade. “Think of how much they spent on that,” he spat. “They should have given that money to the homeless!” 

Regardless of that guy’s indignation, the Berne tower was funded by private donations, not public funds⁸. Shortly after it was dedicated, I passed Berne’s clock tower with a friend at a serendipitous moment on the hour. We parked, got out of the car, and, as I recall, watched a series of figures loop through a pair of doors just above the tower’s arched base.

The memory stuck with me. A week or so ago, my sister and I found ourselves in town precisely at one o’clock to see it anew. 

Eager to discover whether my brain was playing tricks on me or not, Sally and I pulled over on West Water Street and hopped out of the car. Unfortunately, we found that the clock was running about five minutes fast. We’d barely missed the show. Humbug.

We returned to Berne at 1:45, ready for the two o’clock showing five minutes too early. To our despair, nothing happened. Sally circled the grounds and found a sign that said the glockenspiel display only happened every three hours: nine, noon, three, six, and nine. We headed back home. 

This past Sunday, I made plans with my brother to head up north again. We made it to Berne just in time and weren’t the only ones to gather in Muensterberg Plaza. The little hand of the clock -still probably ten feet long- met the big twelve on top,  but nothing happened. I kept filming for a time in the wind wishing I had brought a tripod, then gave up figuring that the tower’s chimes and show were broken. 

Just as I put my phone away, though, the bells started up! I whipped it back out as quickly as I could and got some footage aimed right into the sun at the twin doors. Unfortunately, that was it. We traipsed back to the car and prepared to head home empty-handed. 

It was about halfway down Harrison Street when we heard it: more bells. John rolled down the passenger window just in time to see the doors at the base of the tower swing open. Out marched a procession of twelve allegorical figures circling past in their mechanical parade as a procession of four-letter words escaped from my mouth. The clock was five minutes fast- but the show itself was running four minutes late.

I put the car in park, hopped out, and managed a few seconds of shaky video as the last of the figures were disappearing back through the doors and the bells were winding down. I managed to capture a few shaky seconds of video before the whole performance snapped shut like nothing had happened. After three trips to Berne, that was the grand total of my viewing experience.

Still, there are worse problems to have than chasing a clock tower around Adams County. The truth is that Berne’s is exactly the kind of quirky small-town landmark that makes Indiana fun to explore in the first place. Even if the timing never quite lined up for me, the bells, the plaza, and the small crowd gathered beneath it proved that the tower is doing exactly what it was meant to do: giving people a reason to stop, look up, and linger for a while.

Next time, though, I might just get there fifteen minutes early, plan to stay late, and bring a tripod.

Sources Cited
1 Geiser, S. (1957). Münsterberg (Kanton Bern, Switzerland) Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Web. Retrieved March 8, 2026. 
2 “Adams County”. Jim Forte Postal History. Web. Retrieved March 8, 2026.
3 Sunday editorial round-up (2017, April 2). The Herald-Times [Bloomington]. Web. Retrieved March 8, 2026. 
4 Berne, Indiana: Giant Swiss Clock Tower (2014, July 21). Roadside America. Web. Retrieved March 8, 2026. 
5 lewdinih (2025, December 17). The Berne Clock Tower. Atlas Obscura. Web. Retrieved March 8, 2026. 
6 (See footnote 5). 
7 Stephens, T. (2010, August 1). Clock Tower rings out in Berne, Indiana. SwissInfo. Web. Retrieved March 9, 2026. 
8 (See footnote 7).