CITY HALL (RADNICE)

With its pointed clock tower, the town hall dominates the square. The first "version" dates back to 1378, but the look of the current building is a result of the 1607 remodeling. You can climb to the top of its sharp tower (Věž - guided tours twice a day from March to October - times at the info center) or see its famous astronomical clock in the belfry wall. Dating from the 15th century, it was severely damaged by a bombing in 1945. Some parts have been preserved and are exposed in the city hall. Even if it was known at the time what the astronomical clock looked like before its destruction, the time was not really one of nostalgia for the past. At that time, people swore by Soviet realism, and the astronomical clock was restored in strict accordance with the party ideology. Since then, every day at noon, figures of proletarians instead of saints start a procession. The wheat, the sickle, the hammer, the workers: nothing is missing in the evocation of the ideal Soviet world as it was presented at the time. Even though many Czechs wanted to erase this Moscow creation and return to the traditional version after the Velvet Revolution, the clock has remained as it was and has become an essential element of the Olomouc architectural landscape, bearing witness, in its own way, to a page of the country's history. Opposite it is a superb model of the historic city center, cast in bronze.