Before the Jaffa Clock Tower was built in 1902, locals kept time by the angle of the sun and, by one account, by counting cigarettes. The tower was a gift to Sultan Abdul Hamid II, the Ottoman ruler of the day, and was one of six built in his honour across the empire.

It arrived alongside a governor's residence and a jailhouse, all clustered together as the seat of Ottoman authority in a city beginning to modernise and expand beyond its ancient walls. The Sultan's signature still appears above the old jailhouse entrance across the road. That building is now a luxury hotel. The tower itself still keeps time, more or less.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours use the clock tower as the starting point for peeling back Old Jaffa's layers, tracing the arc from Ottoman rule through Napoleon's siege to ancient myths rooted in the port's rocky shoreline.