You can ring my (Austrian peace) bell: Why these remarkable structures stand all over the world

A copious quantity of apple strudel became the unintended consequence of a winter walking holiday in the Austrian Tyrol. We breakfasted and dined at our hotel each day, but lunch would see us at one mountain restaurant or another with a cold beer and a plate of apple pie. Sometimes the strudel would come with custard, sometimes with ice cream; sometimes it would be flaky and light, sometimes rich and dense. We were connoisseurs by the end of the week and quite happy to relinquish furthering our authority on the subject for many months to come.

Most afternoons, in walking off the strudel, our route back to base in Mösern would take us past an enormous bell erected on a high, circular platform with far-reaching views over the Inn Valley below. The bell, it transpired, is a peace bell, installed in 1997 to mark friendship, good neighbourliness and harmony in a region of historically contested borders. For a few minutes each day at 5pm, the 10-ton bell booms out across the valley — a sonorous reminder of a contract for peace.

Having never encountered a peace bell before, down the rabbit hole I went in pursuit of others, only to discover there are numerous peace bells the whole world over. Who knew, for example, of the Maria Dolens bell in the northern Italian town of Rovereto, perhaps the most solemn and ritualised of all bells, which tolls 100 times every evening to honour the fallen in all wars and to promote peace? Originally cast in 1924 from melted bronze of cannons used in the First World War, this bell has been recast twice in the past century, but still weighs in at more than 22 tons as one of the largest ringing bells in the world.

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There’s a jostling for first place, however, when it comes to famous peace bells. Some would say Japan’s 1964 bell in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park takes top spot, partly for its direct link to a pivotal moment in history and thus widely recognised as the most potent symbol of peace in the nuclear age and partly because visitors get to ring it themselves — an active expression of the individual within a collective commitment to global unity. Many voices, one sound is how the theory goes. The Japanese, with bells deep-rooted in their culture, are particularly good bellmakers.

Indeed, perhaps the most famous peace bell, located in the garden of the UN Headquarters in New York, US, was crafted by the Japanese and presented by them to the UN in 1954. A pipsqueak in terms of weight, coming in at only a fraction of a ton, this bell is heavy on post-Second World War symbolism, cast from coins collected from more than 60 countries and inscribed with the Japanese rendering of ‘Long live absolute world peace’. Alas, it is rung very rarely — on the spring equinox in March and on September 21, the International Day of Peace.

In our current turbulent and troubled times, the bell to which I find myself most readily drawn is Germany’s Freedom Bell, located in the tower of the Rathaus Schöneberg in Berlin. This 10-ton bell, which rings daily at 12 noon in the spirit of freedom and harmony, was funded by 16 million American donors and given to the city in 1950 as a symbol of solidarity between the US and West Germany during the Cold War. Quite an act of fellowship, I should say.

How prescient it seems, therefore, that our King recently gave the US President a big brass bell from a British Second World War submarine as a token of our allied friendship. Perhaps Donald Trump would like to sit down with a slice of apple strudel and start ringing his bell. Who knows what might happen?

This feature originally appeared in the June 3, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.