Hodiny Svatovítské katedrály / St. Vitus Cathedral's Clocks (Prague Castle)
N 50° 05.436 E 014° 24.026
33U E 457111 N 5548876
Remarkable Renaissance horologe-type two-dial clocks are one of the most distinctive decorative elements of the Cathedral Tower of the St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague Castle.
Waymark Code: WM8H3D
Location: Hlavní město Praha, Czechia
Date Posted: 04/02/2010
Views: 239
Remarkable Renaissance horologe-type two-dial clocks are one of the most distinctive decorative elements of the Cathedral Tower of the St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague Castle.
The Cathedral Tower (96.5 m high) is topped with a Renaissance helmet, on which is fixed a 3.5 m high gilded Bohemian lion. The tower is placed asymetrically on the south side of the Cathedral's body close to the grave of St. Wenceslas, the defender of the Czech lands. It acts here as a symbolic substitute for the traditional defensive tower of gothic castles, which in Prague is absent. On the first floor of the tower there is a remarkable gilded grill from the time of the Emperor Rudolph II, whose monogram is displayed a little higher up. The depicted clocks, which has two dials also comes from the same Renaissance period. One face shows only hours and the other only minutes. This solution used to be frequently adopted because it was very difficult to set the axes of both hands into the centre of one face.
St. Vitus cathedral in Prague is the spiritual symbol of the Czech state and masterpiece of the high-Gothic architecture. The construction of the Cathedral was commissioned by the Czech King and Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV and began in 1344 upon the site of an earlier 10th century rotunda. In all, it took nearly six centuries to complete.