Prague Orloj apostles: best viewing

What happens when the clock strikes

The Walk of the Apostles is the hourly show of the Prague Orloj, the astronomical clock on the Old Town Hall. Two small windows above the dial slide aside, and the figures of the twelve Apostles pass behind them. On the stroke of the hour a skeleton figure, who stands for Death, rings a bell, and the other figures beside the dial shake their heads. Everything happens on the building's outside wall, facing the square. That is why the question that matters is not when you arrive, but where you are standing when the hour comes, and whether you can see the niche above the dial. A tower ticket changes none of that, which the rest of this guide explains.

The twelve figures, window by window

The Apostles appear in pairs, and the list below gives the pairs in the order Wikipedia describes them, as seen from the square. It is not the list of the Twelve in the Gospels: James the Great and Matthew do not appear, and Paul and Barnabas take their places. The figures were added to the clock after a major repair in 1787–1791, and the wooden Apostles you see now were restored by the sculptor Vojtěch Sucharda after the damage of 1945. A golden rooster was added to the clock in the repair of 1865–1866. Together with the four figures beside the dial, they are the whole cast of the show.

• James the Less and Peter
• Andrew and Matthias
• Thaddeus and Philip
• Thomas and Paul
• John and Simon
• Barnabas and Bartholomew

The four figures beside the dial

The Apostles are only half the cast. Four figures flank the clock, and they too are set in motion on the hour. Wikipedia describes them as four things despised when the clock was made: vanity, shown by a figure admiring himself in a mirror; greed, a figure holding a bag of gold; Death, the skeleton who strikes the time; and a Turkish figure standing for lust and earthly pleasure. When Death rings the bell, the others shake their heads, as if not yet ready to go. Watch these four as much as the Apostles. They are the part of the show that visitors photograph least.

Where to stand in Old Town Square

The Orloj is mounted on the southern wall of the Old Town Hall, and the Apostle windows sit in a roofed niche high above the astronomical dial. That geometry decides your view. Stand right under the wall and you look up at a steep angle, with the niche close to overhead. Stand back across the open square, or along the street that runs beside the wall, and the whole clock, dial and niche together, fits in one frame, as it does in the photograph at the top of the home page. The figures are small and high, so zoom in before the hour, not during it.

What the tower gallery adds, and what it does not

Prague City Tourism puts the viewing gallery of the Old Town Hall Tower at 42 m. From that height you look down on the square, the spires of the Týn Church and the Old Town's roofs. The GetYourGuide ticket page says the tower shows the astronomical clock from the outside and from above, and that is exactly the limit: from above you see the roof of the niche, not the figures' faces. Treat the tower as a second visit with a different reward, not as a better seat for the parade. It is a good reward, but it is a different one, and the comparison guide sets it against the views from other Prague towers.

The chapel chamber: the apostles from behind the windows

There is one way to see the Apostles from the other side. Prague City Tourism describes a guided circuit of the Old Town Hall's historical interiors, called circuit A, that visits the Gothic chapel with a view of the twelve apostles, the state rooms and the underground. The Hall's history page explains that from the chapel you can see a chamber with the clock's apostles. The circuit runs only on announced dates and times, and its fee is paid on the spot, so it is worth asking at the desk on arrival before you plan around it. The Hall's page also says its historical interiors have no barrier-free access.

Read next: Prague Orloj visit: practical guide

Choosing your hour, and checking the clock is running

The parade comes round every hour, so you do not need to build a day around one performance. This guide quotes no clock times, because the sources differ on the first and last parade and the tower's season moves them. If the square looks packed, walk the lanes around it and come back for the next hour. Check one thing before you travel: the Orloj has been taken down for restoration before, in 2005 for its statues and calendar ring, and from January to September 2018, when a screen replaced it on the tower. The Prague City Tourism page is the place to look, and the booking calendar will show whether tower dates are open.

What sets the figures moving

Wikipedia's page on the Old Town Hall says the figures are set in motion on the stroke of every hour by a complex mechanism, and that machinery has been through a lot. Nazi forces fired on the square on 7 and 8 May 1945, the wooden sculptures burned, and the clock ran again in 1948. During the restoration of 2018 an electric mechanism that had run since 1948 was replaced by an original mechanism from the 1860s, and the clock resumed operation on 28 September 2018. What you watch from the square is a nineteenth-century movement in a much older frame. It is also why the clock is sometimes described as both very old and recently rebuilt, and both descriptions are fair.

A legend to tell while you wait

Wikipedia records a local legend that the city will suffer if the clock is neglected, and that a ghost mounted on the clock was supposed to nod its head to confirm it. A second legend, recounted by the writer Alois Jirásek, says that a clockmaker named Hanuš was blinded on the councillors' orders so that he could not build another clock, and that he disabled this one in revenge. Historians now treat the attribution to Hanuš as a mistake. Both stories are legends, and the history guide keeps them apart from the record of Mikuláš of Kadaň and Jan Šindel, who are the names the documents support.

Read next: Prague Orloj history: from 1410

Who this is not for

If you want the parade as a large show with seats, a stage and a programme, the Orloj will disappoint you. It is a short mechanical procession on a wall, played to a crowd standing in a public square. If crowds bother you, the square at the top of the hour is not calm. And if your only wish is to see the Apostles, you do not need a ticket at all, because the parade is visible from the square for free. A ticket is for the climb, the gallery and, depending on the day, the interiors, and it pays for those, not for a better view of the figures.

A ticket, if you want one

Three GetYourGuide listings fit this visit, and the home page compares them. The Old Town Hall Tower ticket, from the activity provider Prague City Tourism, covers the tower, and its ticket page also names the historical halls and the underground. A second listing adds a 20-minute introduction to the clock and an online audio guide. A third is a guided walk past the clock that stays outside the buildings. None of them changes what the Apostles do on the hour, so choose by what you want to add to the parade, and keep the parade itself for the square. If you hesitate between them, start with the tower ticket, since its listing is the one run by the Hall's own keeper.