Vienna Clock Museum

Inside the Palais Obizzi sits the foundation of what became the world’s first clock museum: a collection of 10,000 timepieces originally stashed in a Viennese sanatorium by an obsessive schoolteacher named Rudolf Kaftan. When the building was slated for demolition in 1917, the city swooped in, purchased the lot, and opened the Uhrenmuseum in 1921.

Shortly after, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach’s collection came up for grabs — her heirs gave the city a deadline: raise 301,000 Kronen by July 15, 1917, or lose it. They pulled it off thanks to donations from wealthy Viennese business magnates. The star of the collection: an astronomical clock completed in 1769 by Frater David Cajetano, a Discalced Augustinian monk who studied mathematics, mechanics, and astronomy in Vienna, then applied his knowledge to create a clock with a universal calendar illustrating planetary movements, day length, and sunset times. Every hour, all three floors erupt in a symphony of hundreds of clocks chiming in unison.