To serve the interests of the member societies of the World Carillon Federation (WCF), this page provides links to the sections of the TowerBells Website that are strictly concerned with traditional carillons — those musical instruments that are composed of tuned tower bells (whether actually hung in a tower or not) and played from a mechanical keyboard for direct control of touch. Each page about a carillon contains all known details of that instrument, and exists in the context of the entire TowerBells Website, i.e., not totally isolated from non-WCF material.
IMPORTANT: If you can provide information that is missing from any page here, or provide corrections to a page, please use the email link at the bottom of that page to start a message to the Webmaster. That link will identify the page in the Subject line of your message. Also, you may write in any language.
This page offers three ways to find traditional carillons — via indexes or maps or a search.
Indexes are lists sorted in various orders — by city, number of bells, year of completion, etc. The principal advantage of indexes is that each one provides a particular type of informational context for each listed carillon. Each geographical region listed here has a set of indexes of various types.
Geographical indexes for the world are organized with identification of the various national or regional WCF member organizations. Those regions of the world that fall under the purview of a WCF member society can also be found directly as follows:
Keyboard range indexes — direct access to all eight geographic indexes by keyboard range, for easier comparison of similar instruments.
Mobile (traveling) carillons, each of which is also included in indexes for the geographic region of its home town (see above)
War Memorials and Peace Carillons, each of which is also included in indexes for the geographic region where it is located (see above)
The principal advantage of regional locator maps is that they provide a visual geographical context for all mapped instruments. They also provide direct information about geographic distribution that cannot be shown in any other manner; this is aided by a filter capability. The disadvantage is that some manipulation of the map is usually required to find a specific carillon.
A worldwide regional locator map system includes all of the following:
The principal advantage of a search is that if it is successful then it will take the searcher directly to the site data page about the desired carillon. The disadvantage is that the search might return a list of multiple unrelated matches to the search term.
Although we do not yet have the capability to restrict a TowerBells search to traditional carillons, or to filter results by parameters such as number of bells, it is possible to search for the name of a carillon or an institution or a city. Then one of the search results should point to what you seek.
The World Carillon Federation is supported by dues from its member organizations and by contributions from the following corporate sponsors (listed in alphabetic order):
The TowerBells Website is independent of the WCF, but supports it by providing this custom interface page and by maintaining a relevant organization of important data regarding traditional carillons (which the WCF calls "carillons" without any modifier).
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This page was created on 13-Mar-25 and last revised on 21-Jul-26.
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