Drum Tower

Drum tower in Wat Si Saket, a Buddhist temple in Vientiane, Laos

The term Drum tower (Chinese: 鼓楼; pinyin: Gulou) is used to refer to a tower in the center of an old Chinese city, housing signal drums. There was usually also a Bell tower nearby. For individual towers, see:

• Gulou and Zhonglou (Beijing) (Drum Tower and Bell Tower of Beijing)
• Drum Tower of Xi'an
• Drum Tower of Nanjing

Drum towers can be found in a number of Buddhist temples in China and other countries of the regions as well.

The drum tower often being located in the symbolic center of a city, downtown districts of several Chinese cities have been named after the tower; see Gulou (disambiguation) for a list.