Each and every day at the hour, on the hour from nine in the morning and ten at night, a cluster of people gathers in front of the Old Town Hall on Old Town Square to see the “Orloj”, an incredible piece of clockwork on the town hall’s south tower. A golden rooster crows, and so begins the procession of the Twelve Apostles, who gaze out from the upper windows. But that’s not all, even more moving figures start moving to delight the crowd: Death, the Allegories of Vanity, Greed, Philosophy, Delight, Astronomy, and Rhetoric, and, of course, the Archangel Michael. In the centre of all this lies an enormous and fabulous astronomical clock designed in 1410 by royal clockmaker Mikuláš of Kadaně and astronomer Jan Šindel. This fabulous contraption still shows, each day and night, the current position of the Sun, Moon, and the constellations in the Zodiac. The calendar wheel below displays images by the celebrated Czech painter Josef Mánes, each of which illustrates a month and sign of the Zodiac. © Prague.biz