On the north side of the Town Hall, Olomouc’s astronomical clock was first built in the 1400s, but after picking up damage in the Second World War it underwent a few interesting changes.
Communism had just arrived in Olomouc, so the clock was redesigned in the social realist style. Now, instead of saints there are depictions of workers and engineers, while the dial displays the birthdays of Lenin and Stalin, as well as the International Day of the Worker.
Much of the communist paraphernalia around Olomouc disappeared after the Velvet revolution, so this clock represents an off-beat memorial to the city’s soviet years.
