Prague Astronomical Clock
— — the oldest clock still keeping its hour.
Not only on a wall.
“The astronomical clock on the south wall of Prague's Old Town Hall has run, with interruptions, since 1410. The astronomical dial maps the sun, moon, zodiac, and an older Ptolemaic sky onto a single rotating face. Every hour on the hour the small windows above open and the twelve apostles pass in procession. The square below stops walking for the length of the show.
Prague Astronomical Clock, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Orloj is mounted on the south face of the Old Town Hall in Staré Město, the medieval core of Prague on the right bank of the Vltava river. The astronomical dial was installed in 1410 by the clockmaker Mikuláš of Kadaň and the mathematician Jan Šindel of Charles University; the calendar dial below is later, and the procession of apostles was added at the end of the fifteenth century. The clock is the oldest astronomical clock in the world still operating on its original mechanism.
The Orloj is set into the south wall of the Old Town Hall, a Gothic complex begun in 1338 that has grown by addition for nearly seven centuries. The clock's stone surround and the late-Gothic chapel beside it survived the artillery damage of May 1945, when the Hall's adjoining neo-Gothic wing was destroyed in the closing days of the war. The face was restored repeatedly through the twentieth century; the most recent full restoration of the dials and the apostle figures concluded in September 2018.
The clock is mounted on the south wall of the Old Town Hall facing Old Town Square and is visible from the square at any hour without admission. The apostle procession runs at the top of every hour between 9:00 and 23:00. The interior of the Old Town Hall, the clock mechanism, and the tower viewing platform require a ticket; the queue is shortest at opening. The square sits roughly five minutes' walk from the Charles Bridge and ten from the river embankment.