The Timewheel is one of the world's largest hourglass

Hourglass

An hourglass measures the passage of a few minutes or an hour of time. It has two connected vertical glass bulbs allowing a regulated trickle of material from the top to the bottom. Once the top bulb is empty, it can be inverted to begin timing again. The name hourglass comes from historically...

es, situated in Budapest

Budapest

Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...

, Hungary next to City Park

City Park (Budapest)

Városliget is a public park in Budapest, Hungary close to the city centre. It is located in District XIV of Budapest. Its main entrance is Heroes' Square , one of Hungary's World Heritage sites.-Name:The area was formerly called Ökör-dűlő, meaning "Oxmeadow"...

, right of Heroes' Square

Heroes' Square (Budapest)

Hősök tere is one of the major squares of Budapest, Hungary, rich with historic and political connotations. Its iconic statue complex, the Millennium Memorial, was completed in 1900, the same year the square was named "Heroes' Square"...

 and behind the Palace of Art

Palace of Art (Budapest)

*Kunsthalle Budapest is a contemporary art museum in Budapest. The building, built in 1895, is located in Heroes' Square, facing the Museum of Fine Arts....

 (Műcsarnok). It is made of granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

, steel

Steel

Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...

, and glass, and weighs 60 tons. The "sand

Sand

Sand is a naturally occurring granular material composed of finely divided rock and mineral particles.The composition of sand is highly variable, depending on the local rock sources and conditions, but the most common constituent of sand in inland continental settings and non-tropical coastal...

" (actually glass granules

Granular material

A granular material is a conglomeration of discrete solid, macroscopic particles characterized by a loss of energy whenever the particles interact . The constituents that compose granular material must be large enough such that they are not subject to thermal motion fluctuations...

) flows from the upper to the lower glass chamber for one year. The sand runs out on New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve is observed annually on December 31, the final day of any given year in the Gregorian calendar. In modern societies, New Year's Eve is often celebrated at social gatherings, during which participants dance, eat, consume alcoholic beverages, and watch or light fireworks to mark the...

 and the Timewheel is then turned 180 degrees so the flow of the sand can resume for the next year. The turning is done by manual power using steel cables and it takes roughly 45 minutes for 4 people to complete the half turn. The Timewheel was unveiled on 1 May 2004 to commemorate the historic enlargement of the European Union

Enlargement of the European Union

The Enlargement of the European Union is the process of expanding the European Union through the accession of new member states. This process began with the Inner Six, who founded the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952...

 that also admitted Hungary (along with 9 other countries) to the EU

European Union

The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...

.

The idea and the building of the Timewheel is marked by János Herner, the architectural design of the statue was done by István Janáky.

The Nima Sand Museum 1-year hourglass ("The Sandtimer") in Nima

Nima, Shimane

was a town located in Nima District, Shimane, Japan.On October 1, 2005 Nima, along with the town of Yunotsu, also from Nima District, was merged into the expanded city of Ōda....

, Shimane Prefecture, Japan, was constructed in 1991, and was inspired by the Timewheel idea.