Two symbols, two very different stories

Ask any Brno local what the city's mascots are and you'll hear the same two answers: the Dragon and the Wheel. Both hang today in the passageway of the Old Town Hall, the oldest secular building in the city, and both come wrapped in centuries of storytelling that says as much about Brno's sense of humour as its history.

The "dragon" that is actually a crocodile

Suspended from the ceiling just inside the Old Town Hall's entrance is a large, unmistakably reptilian taxidermy specimen that locals have called the Brno Dragon for generations. The legend tells of a beast that terrorised the town and its livestock until a clever butcher tricked it into eating a lime-filled carcass, causing it to drink itself to death at the river. The reality, established by later research, is less dramatic but arguably more interesting: the "dragon" is a genuine Nile crocodile, almost certainly brought back from abroad as an exotic curiosity or diplomatic gift at a time when nobody in landlocked Moravia had ever seen one, and a crocodile, to 16th- or 17th-century eyes, might reasonably have looked like the dragon of local folklore.

The Wheel and the crooked pinnacle

Alongside the dragon hangs a large wooden cart wheel, whose legend claims a wheelwright from a nearby village won a bet that he could cut down a tree and roll a finished wheel all the way to Brno between sunrise and sunset, a feat so suspicious that the townsfolk accused him of sorcery rather than admire his craftsmanship. A third symbol sits just outside: the visibly twisted stone pinnacle on the Old Town Hall's late-Gothic portal, said to be master builder Anton Pilgram's petty revenge on the city council after a dispute over his fee.

Brno's modern Astronomical Clock

A short walk away on Freedom Square (Náměstí Svobody) stands Brno's Astronomical Clock — and first-time visitors expecting a medieval mechanism like Prague's are usually surprised. Brno's version, a black granite structure resembling an artillery shell, was only unveiled in 2010, and it references the city's successful defence against a Swedish siege in 1645 rather than the zodiac. Each day, a glass marble drops from the mechanism. an event that draws a genuinely enthusiastic scrum of children each morning trying to catch it.

Seeing both in one walk

The Old Town Hall and Freedom Square sit five minutes' walk apart in Brno's compact historic centre, making it easy to see both symbols alongside the Vegetable Market, the Cathedral of St Peter and Paul, and Špilberk Castle in a single morning or afternoon.

Listen to these stories and even more!

See both legends in person, along with Brno's functionalist architecture, and more, on our Brno: 3-Hour History & Legends Walking Tour.