Maria first examined the city hall design. It was an enormous Gothic-style building with three floors. The twelve pointed arches on the first floor flanked a tall central tower. The tower itself stood five stories high, featuring an observation deck midway up and a clock face near the top, marking it as a clock tower.

“He probably got the idea from this,” Simon pointed to the grandfather clock in the study, “I even heard he asked Agricola if it was possible to build.”

With such an iconic structure—a world-first clock tower, no less—the city hall was bound to gain fame. Alejandro, a master at designing and constructing churches, had crafted...