The Zimmer Tower in Lier is cleaned with Green Care Professional, making it a sustainability role model

Before the Zimmer Tower got its name, it was a simple keep within the city walls of Lier in the 14th century. The current name was given to the tower in honor of the Belgian clockmaker Louis Zimmer (1888-1970), whose Jubilee clock is built into the front of the tower. It’s a very unusual clock in which 12 smaller clocks circle the large clock with 57 dials. Technically, they are not all clocks, but rather displays of information such as moon phases and tides and the time of day on all continents.

In 1960 a new pavilion was built next to the tower in order to present Zimmer’s latest masterpiece, the astronomical clock, which was prepared for the World Fair 1935 in Brussels and then exhibited in the USA. Albert Einstein was fascinated by Zimmer’s astronomical clock and congratulated the clockmaker for the clock’s mechanism. One of the clocks, for example, takes 25,800 years to complete a single orbit, which corresponds exactly to Earth’s axial precession cycle. Zimmer later expanded the clock to include a mechanical planetarium. It’s no wonder that the tower with so much history was placed under historic preservation in 1980.

Since 2019 the Zimmer museum has been cleaned with Green Care Professional products from Werner & Mertz. It’s a special challenge since too much moisture could damage the clocks. That’s why we adapted the work processes and cleaning methods in close cooperation with the responsible parties so we could satisfy all the requirements.

Our success in brief

• switch from traditional products to Green Care Professional
• development of specially adapted work processes and cleaning methods