The Clock Tower

The Jaffa Clock Tower rises in the middle of Yefet Street as a three-story limestone structure, capped by a copper-covered roof and arched windows. Completed in nineteen oh three, it was one of seven such towers built across Ottoman Palestine to celebrate the silver jubilee of Sultan Abdul Hamid the Second. While the empire eventually commissioned over one hundred of these structures, this specific project began as a local effort led by a Jewish businessman named Joseph Bey Moyal. He raised the necessary funds from Jaffa’s diverse communities, including Arabs, Armenians, and Maronites, to modernize the city’s central market square.