The story of this place
Mounted on the Old Town Hall in 1410, the Orloj is the world's oldest astronomical clock still in operation. Its blue-and-gold astrolabe tracks the sun, moon and zodiac against a medieval geocentric universe. Legend says the clockmaker Hanuš was blinded on the councillors' orders so no rival city could copy his masterpiece; in revenge he reached into the mechanism and stopped it for years. Every hour a procession of the Twelve Apostles glides past two windows while a skeleton Death rings a bell and inverts an hourglass. Nazi gunfire nearly destroyed it in May 1945; restorers rebuilt the wooden figures and it chimes on.