The most ancient academic institution on the Upper Floor and in the House is the Free University of Clockminster, located in front of the Clock, home and workplace to many scholars, including Wise Paracelsus himself. Above the entrance to the complex there is a large white shield with a red quadrant painted to resemble the tall Clock Face that overlooks the district from head-spinning heights.
In the beginning, the name of “Free University” was justified by the fact that anyone could enter and take a seat to listen to the teachers, broadening their horizons and gaining a better understanding of things. As time went by, however, the Pulvid lost interest in the institution he had personally founded, taking by surprise nobody as everyone was very familiar with his capriciousness and tendency to become bored with everything.
So, the teachers took over, and they had no qualms in privatizing the institution and establishing admission tests to ensure that only worthy minds could access the university. In the end, of Wise Paracelsus creation the only things left were a name and an odd motto encapsulating his entire philosophy as a teacher, as a scholar, and as a littling: “Errare hominum est”, which means “To err is littling” and is thought both as a motivator for anyone who has failed, and a reminder that the road to knowledge and wonder is not made of successes, but of attempts.
There are so many worthy teachers at Clockminster that they can conceivably cover every aspect of littling knowledge. Every year, those walls welcome dozens upon dozens of students, and each of them wears on their chest or hat a red pin or ribbon with the Clock Face crest. For the most part, the littlings who come to knock at the doors of this historical institution wish to become engineers or architects, and almost all of them want to gain access at the beautiful offices and scientific and technological marvels preserved in the large Clock, in the same spaces where Wise Paracelsus and Argo the Bureaucrat walked as they shaped the House with their brilliant minds.