On May 33 1944, the town's clock in Nafplio, "the iron heart of the city" as poet Emmanuel Terzakis called it, stopped ticking. One more casualty of war. It's silence covered the city with a veil of death. Nafplio's clock was blown to pieces by the German troops. This act was imprinted in the collective memory of the city folk and identified with the violence of the German occupation; it became a symbol of liberty.
It stood at Αcronafplia from the time of Otto. It had arrived from Bavaria, a gift of Ludwig I, Otto's father, especially for the capital of Greece, an element that would give the city a European personality. But the German occupation forces of World Word II decided that it had to be destroyed because it obstructed their ground machine guns. Though the population reacted intensely, they could not prevent it been blown up. They managed, however to save it by safeguarding its mechanism. Thus, after the country's liberation "time came back" to a free city. The clock started to tick again on the afternoon of September 14, 1949.
