For over 600 years, every night, the quiet of Lausanne, Switzerland has been periodically broken by the cry of the city’s night watchman, but relatively few are even aware the job is still in existence.
The quiet nature of the loud job is down to its hours—10 pm to 2 am—and the fact that when watchman Renato Haeusler calls out the hours (“This is the watchman! The bell has tolled 10. The bell has tolled 10.”) he’s standing on a platform at the top of the cathedral bell tower, 153 steps above the city.
The job of watching out for fire, invasion and other dangers was once a common one, operating in nearly every town and city, and often matched with other watchmen on foot walking the town. But times have changerd, and now only seven towns in Europe keep up the tradition (the others are Annaberg, Celle and Noerdlingen Germany; Ripon, England; Krakow, Poland and Ystad, Sweden)
Haeusler has a replacement who works the three days he doesn’t; Haeusler was the replacement for 14 years before getting the main job, whose hours used to be from 9 pm to dawn. Until 1950, the night watchman also had the job of ringing the tower bell with a hammer.
