It’s considered a rite of passage for University of Northern Iowa students to kiss under the campanile at midnight, and while the outside of the campus landmark is familiar to many thousands, few have been inside the hundred-foot-tall tower — until now.
Nathan Arndt, director and chief curator of the UNI Museum, says a 3D, 360-degree interactive tour of the campanile is now online so anyone can get an up-close look at the university centerpiece.
“This exhibit is to show the other side of that building. It’s to get people in the front door, get them up the spiral staircase, every level, and it’s a whole different world once you get to the inside of the building,” Arndt says. “It looks completely different. See some of the old elements that are still left behind from when it was built, to some of the modern elements at the very top, including the beautiful campanile mechanism at the very top.”
While some bell towers contain speakers that play recorded songs, Arndt assures that every note heard ringing across the Cedar Falls campus is from an actual metal bell being rung.
“There’s an entire mechanism that is designed just to ring those bells,” he says. “In the tour, if you take a look straight up into the top of the ceiling, you’re going to see a system of wires and pulleys and levers, and it is a marvel of mechanics, I think would be the best way to put that, and everything is rung 100% through these mechanisms.”
Arndt says curating this digital tour provides a unique viewing opportunity, while also allowing the experts to embed historical details and share them with current and future Panthers, and the wider community. Just how many bells are in the campanile?
“If you were to look up in that video, the 3-D tour, you’re going to see a total of 56 bells sitting up in that little tiny bell tower and they are sandwiched very tight together,” Arndt says. “Some of them were installed as recent as 2023 and some of them go back to the original 1926. They had only a fraction of 15 bells originally in that tower, so it’s increased quite a bit over the years.”
Creators of the 3D tour went to great lengths to include myriad small details to enlighten curious viewers.
“If you’re an architectural fan like I am, take a look at the brickwork on the inside and look at how UNI is monitoring and taking care of this building,” Arndt says. “It’s really impressive — from little shifters on the walls that show how much bricks are moving in the winter to even dedicated to preserving the original spiral staircase in this building. It is really, really impressive.”
The campanile was first proposed in 1914 and fundraising began, but the onset of World War One pushed back the plans, and construction began over a decade later with completion in 1926. The U-N-I Campanile will mark its 100th anniversary later this month — on September 19th.
Hear the UNI Fight Song played on the Campanile below: