The Old Town Square

The Old Town Square is a pedestrian highway surrounded by peacefully coexisting baroque and midieval buildings. This was the midieval town's main marketplace and has always been at the centre of action. Criminals were executed here, martyrs were burned at the stake and huge crowds gathered here in 1948 to greet the announcement of the Communist takeover. Shortly before the velvet revolution in '89, the Communists invested big bucks into giving it a serious makeover.

The Square's Astronomical Clock has been tic-toc'ing since 1490 and has a swell party trick: every hour on the hour from 8am to 8pm, wooden statuettes of saints pop out from trap doors while below them a lesson in medieval morality is enacted by Greed, Vanity, Death and the Turk. You can spot the 4 morality actors in the top pic. The clock shows the movement of the sun and moon through the zodiak and gives the time in 3 different formats: Central European time, Old Czech time and (???) Babylonian time. Clearly Master Hanus the clockmaker built it back in the day when the dwellers of Prague believed that the sun revolved AROUND Prague rather than the opposite!! :^}