The City of Vienna Clock Museum has been housed since 1921 in the "Harfenhaus" (Harpist's House), one of the oldest houses in Vienna. The collection is on three floors and illustrates the development of clocks from the 15th C. to the present day. The 1,200 or so exhibits include very basic clocks, tower and table clocks, pocket watches, Austrian lantern timepieces of the Biedermeier period, clocks with illustrated faces, wrist watches, and a 1992 computer clock.
Following the rebuilding of the second and third floors more Empire and Biedermeier clocks are exhibited. One room on the second floor contains only clocks with illustrated faces, and on the third floor are electrical wall clocks with regulators. The development of the wrist watch is illustrated by means of more than 170 items, beginning with some superb jeweled watches from c. 1850, followed by First World War trench timepieces, gentlemen's self-winding watches from the 1930s, together with unusual and novelty items from the present day.
Room 1: Mainly tower clocks, among one from St Stephen's Cathedral dated 1699 (Cat. No. 3,043) and the oldest item in the collection, a 15th C. tower clock.
Room 2: Hand made, weight driven wall clocks. The pièce de résistance is an astronomical clock of 1663 (No. 794).
Room 3: Traveling, table and wall clocks. The four poster bed clock (No. 2,472) was made in the 17th C.
Room 4: Pedestal clocks. One of the most valuable is a pendulum clock by Louis Monet of Paris, dated 1752 (No. 50).
Room 5: Part of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach's collection, including a Swiss gold pendant watch c. 1800 (Nos. 1,490-1,492). Also other valuable gold enameled timepieces.
Room 6: Commode, pedestal and traveling clocks. The astronomical pedestal clock (No. 232) is dated 1810 and comes from a Viennese workshop.
Room 7: Rare Japanese clocks, including unusual 18th C. pillar clocks (Nos. 799-802).
Room 8: Desk clocks and clocks in the form of figures. The "Rider's Clock" (No. 3,064) is of Austrian manufacture and dates from c. 1802.
Room 9: Empire grandfather clocks.
Room 10: Seven clocks with illustrated faces.
Room 11: Biedermeier time pieces in veneered wooden cases.
Room 12: Wall clocks and a remarkable astronomical clock of 1863 (No. 326).
Room 13: Clocks from the turn of the century; one in the form of a bicycle.
Room 14: Clocks from the Black Forest and also a particularly fine Austrian carved cuckoo clock (No. 3,065).
Room 15: Novelties, such as a night light clock (No. 250), probably Swiss.
Room 16: About 270 pocket watches and more than 170 wrist watches dating from 1850 to the present day.
Room 17: Toy clocks and automata movements.
Room 18: Clocks in the form of flutes, organs and harps.
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