Summary of instruments
by country and type
(worldwide)

The table below shows the numbers of tower bell instruments in each of the regions or countries of the world for which this Website has indexes and summaries.  The "Conventional bells" columns include not only those made of cast bronze but also those made of cast steel, cast brass or porcelain.

Areas indexed and summarized	Conventional bells				Tubular chimes	Countries
	Traditional carillons	NT & unknown	Chimes	Total sites
by region
North America	192	164	744	1101	349	3
Central & South America	12	17	21	49	1	22
Africa & Mideast	4	9	19	32	2	10
Asia & Pacific Rim	12	22	134	168	17	11
British Isles	16	9	*   95	120	*	6
Europe	68	72	155	295	4	31
by country
Belgium	101	25	41	167	0	1
Denmark and dependencies	31	20	22	73	1	3
France	63	20	95	178	0	1
Germany	50	120	166	336	0	1
Italy	1	6	123	130	0	1
Netherlands	196	64	162	422	0	1
TOTALS:	742	548	1776	3076	374	89

EXPLANATIONS:

• Definitions of most regions should be obvious from their names.  Exceptions:
  "Europe" includes all European countries except those which are on the British Isles and those which are individually listed.
  "Asia & Pacific Rim" includes eastern and southern Asia plus Australia and all intervening or nearby island countries.
  Russia is included with Europe, and the Middle East is included with Africa.
• The countries listed individually or within the various regions are only those known to have tower bell instruments of the types which are of interest to this Website.  The choice of whether to index and summarize such instruments by country or by region was based largely on the following criteria:
  1. The three countries of North America, being the focus of interest of The Guild of Carillonneurs in North America (GCNA), are treated as a unit and thus form a region.
  2. Outside of North America, those countries for which there are "large" numbers of tower bell instruments are treated individually.
  3. Those countries which have "small" numbers of tower bell instruments are grouped together in an approximate fit to the major continents.
  4. The relative definitions of "large" and "small" may change from time to time.
  The "Countries" column gives the number of countries in each region which have at least one tower bell instrument (of any kind) in the underlying database.
• Each region or country name which is hyperlinked leads to a page from which you can find all of the indexes and summaries that have been produced for that region or country.  Those index pages lead to site data pages for every known tower bell instrument in the corresponding region or country, as well as pages listing all great bells that are not included in such instruments.
• Types:
  • "Conventional bells" include both cup-shaped and hemispherical bronze bells, steel bells and porcelain bells.  Glass bells are included if they have been tuned.
  • "Traditional carillons" are those equipped with baton keyboard and mechanical transmission.
  • "NT & unknown" includes non-traditional carillons, hybrid carillons, carillon-sized collections and carillon-sized instruments with unknown mechanism.
  • "Chimes" includes all types of instruments and collections with 8 to 22 bells.
  • "Tubular chimes" are made of thick-walled tubular bells, and no distinction is made here between carillon-sized and chime-sized instruments.

FOOTNOTES (*):

1. In the British Isles, rings are not listed (over 2000 have at least 8 bells), nor are those chimes without baton keyboards.
2. Tubular tower chimes in the British Isles are not listed, though over 200 are known to have existed at one time (and many of those still exist).

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This summary page was created 2006/04/18 and last revised 2024/10/22. .

Please send comments or questions about this page to csz_stl@swbell.net.