Free to watch, performs on the hour, and finishes faster than almost anyone expects. Worth seeing — not worth building a morning around.
What it costs
Free. You stand in the square and look up. Nothing to book, nothing to buy.
Going inside the Old Town Hall — the tower, the chapel, the machinery — is ticketed and sold as part of the town hall visit.
When to go
On the hour, during the hours the show runs. A crowd forms several minutes before and disperses immediately afterwards, because the performance itself lasts well under a minute: the apostles pass the two windows, the figures move, the cockerel crows, and it is over.
Stand back rather than close. From the front row you are looking almost straight up.
.jpg){kind=link}
Getting there
On the south wall of the Old Town Hall, on Old Town Square. Metro A to Staroměstská.
If you only have an hour
Arrive five minutes before the hour, stand well back on the square rather than under the dials, watch it, and move on. The rest of your hour is better spent on the town hall tower directly above it or in the streets behind Týn, which empty out completely within one block of the square.
What people get wrong
It is routinely sold as the oldest working astronomical clock in the world. The defensible version: its oldest component was first recorded on 9 October 1410, which makes it the oldest one still operating — but most of what you are looking at is later. The calendar dial below is nineteenth-century, the apostles were added in the 1860s, and the whole thing was rebuilt after fire damage in 1945. Still remarkable. Just not untouched.
Nearby
Ticketing arrangements and opening patterns as published for 2026 and checked on 4 September 2026. Prices and hours change without much warning — confirm with the site itself before you travel. More sights, and how they fit together, in Landmarks & Sights.