Crowds of people gather
every hour between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. beneath the tower of the Old Town
Square City Hall (map) on which the Astronomical Clock is located. Everyone
waits impatiently to see the procession of the twelve apostles, to see the
Turk, the Fop, the Miser and the Skeleton come alive, accompanied by bells
ringing and the crowing of a cockerel. Not seeing the Astronomical clock during
a visit to Prague is like neglecting to visit the Eiffel Tower during a visit
to Paris.
The Prague Astronomical
Clock is not only a supreme piece of Czech Gothic scientific and technological
work, but also a beautiful artistic monument. As well as four types of time it
also shows the movement of the heavenly bodies and, since the 19th
century, the days of the calendar along with the zodiac signs including an allegory
of the months and 365 saint’s feast days.
The clockmaker Mikuláš of
Kadan made the clock mechanism for the Prague Astronomical Clock in 1410, most
probably according to a design by Jan Šindela, a professor of mathematics and
astronomy. Throughout the centuries the Astronomical Clock was perfected and
repaired several times. During the last days of the Second World War it was
damaged quite severely during the fire of the Old Town Square City Hall. It was
only restarted after three years of very complicated restoration work. The most
recent significant repairs took place in 2005, when the astronomical clock was
completely disassembled after an interval of sixty years. The technical
components were renovated and the statues and the lower circle by Joseph
Mánes, an important Czech artist and illustrator and a representative of
romanticism, who painted the aforementioned calendar panel depicting the signs
of the zodiac for the astronomical clock, were also restored.