BERKELEY, Calif. — When the clock strikes 12 on the UC Berkeley carillon tower, Jeff Davis’ concert begins. Davis is what you call a carillonist and for the past 23 years he’s been playing and teaching students to play music with giant bells.
“Our biggest bell is five and a quarter tons,” said Davis.
The noon concerts generally last about 10 minutes and it can be heard across campus and many parts of the city.
“It is absolutely essential to the life of Berkeley,” said Davis.
Completed in 1915, the Campanile, aka Sather Tower, was built to be the icon of the university. At the time, it was the tallest building in the Bay Area standing at 307 feet tall. Today, it is the third tallest clock and bell tower in the world, surpassed by only by the one in Saint Mark's Square in Italy and Big Ben in London.
Maggie Debelak and Rohil Bhinge are among the many campus ambassadors who give tours of the Campanile, which has been open to the public for over a century thanks to its robust engineering.
“When it was built they used three times the amount of steel that was necessary in order for it to stay upright, so now it is considered the most earthquake safe building on campus,” said Debelak.
A $5 ticket will get you an elevator ride to the top of the tower where you get a magnificent view of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. You also get a view of the historic UC Berkeley campus, home to some of the most iconic displays of activism like the free speech movement.
“Students really wanted to just be able to express themselves and talk about what they believe in, and that spread from Berkeley to other campuses around the country,” said Bhinge.
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Another view from the Campanile reveals some famous film locations on campus, most recently Christopher Nolan’s biopic 'Oppenheimer.'
“I was actually giving a campus tour the day that they were filming, and they made me re-route all the way around the College of Chemistry,” said Bhinge.
J. Robert Oppenheimer is known as the father of the atomic bomb and did much of his research on campus inside the physics building below the Campanile.
The Campanile served as a backdrop for numerous movies including the 1967 film The Graduate and the 2018 comic book movie Ant-Man and the Wasp.
“Also, Monsters University drew a lot of inspiration from UC Berkeley because Pixar Studios is very close by,” said Bhinge.
The Campanile is one of the most visited tourist attractions not only on campus but in the Bay Area, and a big reason for that is the daily free concerts.
“I would say that the bells are the only thing everyone that comes to this campus has in common. So, it's really the biggest symbol of the community, I think,” said Davis.
MORE MUSIC ON THE BACKROADS: No radio needed on Lancaster's "Musical Road." Your tires play the tunes.
