Besançon astronomical clock

Auguste-Lucien Vérité of Beauvais designed and built Besançon's present astronomical clock, between 1858 and 1863.

The clock is meant to express the theological concept that each second of the day the Resurrection of Christ transforms the existence of man and of the world.

By 1857 Bernardin's clock had stopped working, and Cardinal Mathieu, the Archbishop of Besançon, commissioned a replacement from Vérité, who built it in his workshop in Beauvais.

Immediately after he finished the Besançon commission, Vérité built an even larger, and different, clock, for Beauvais Cathedral.

Bernardin's clock may well provided a point of departure for Vérité when designing his, but apart from general inspiration no specific element seems to have been copied from the earlier one.