Page 78 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Prague

76  PR A GUE AREA B Y AREA

The Apostles
Town Hall Clock
Orloj
The Town Hall acquired its first clock
at the beginning of the 15th century.
According to legend, in 1490, when
it was rebuilt by a master clock maker
called Hanuš (real name Jan Z Růže),
the councillors were so anxious to
prevent him from re creating his
masterpiece elsewhere, that they
blinded the poor man. Though the
clock has been repaired many times
since, the mechanism was perfected
by Jan Táborský between 1552
and 1572.
Vanity
and
Greed

Arabic
numerals
1–24
Vojtěch Sucharda’s Apostles, sculpted after the
last set was burnt in 1945
Astronomical Clock
Apostles with the sun in Aries
Death
The centrepiece of the show The Turk, a
that draws a crowd of Calendar by
spectators every time the Blue, representing the Josef Mánes symbol of lust
clock strikes the hour is the daylight hours (see pp34–5)
procession of the 12 Apostles.
First the figure of Death, the Astronomical Clock
skeleton on the right of the divided into 12 parts. In
clock, gives a pull on the rope The clockmaker’s view of the so-called Babylonian time,
that he holds in his right hand. universe had the Earth fixed the period of daylight was
In his left hand is an hourglass, firmly at the centre. The purpose divided into 12 hours, which
which he raises and inverts. of the clock was not to tell you would vary in length from
Two windows then open and the exact time but to imitate the summer to
the clockwork Apostles (or to supposed orbits of the sun and winter.
be precise 11 of the Apostles moon about the Earth. The hand The clock
plus St Paul) move slowly with the sun, which points to also shows the
round, led by St Peter. the hour, in fact records three movement
At the end of this part of the different kinds of time. The of the sun
display, a cock crows and outer ring of medieval Arabic and moon
the clock chimes the hour. The numerals measures Old through the
other moving figures are a Bohemian time, in which a day 12 signs of
Turk, who shakes his head of 24 hours was reckoned from the zodiac,
from side to side, Vanity, who the setting of the sun. The ring which were
looks at himself in a mirror of Roman numerals indicates of great imp-
and Greed, adapted from the time as we know it. The blue or tance in
original medieval stereotype part of the dial represents the 16th-century The figures of Death
of a Jewish moneylender. visible part of the sky. This is Prague. and the Turk

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