Hoher Markt and the Anker Clock

You are standing in Vienna's oldest square. Beneath the paving lie the remains of the tribunes' houses, the officers' quarters of the legionary camp of Vindobona. The small Roman Museum at number 3 lets you see some of those walls.

1Market, court and pillory

In the Middle Ages this was the commercial heart of the town, with guild houses and stalls selling cloth and food. It was also the place of justice: from 1325 to 1839 the criminal court sat here, and in front of it stood the pillory, where convicts were put on public display.

2A fountain promised by an emperor

The fountain in the middle, the Vermählungsbrunnen or Marriage Fountain, shows the wedding of Mary and Joseph. Leopold I vowed to build it; it was first put up in wood to designs by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, and between 1729 and 1732 his son Joseph Emanuel rebuilt it in marble, with sculptures by Antonio Corradini.

3The parade of the hours

The Anker Clock was commissioned by the insurance company of the same name and designed by the Art Nouveau painter Franz Matsch; it first ran in 1915. Every hour a different figure crosses the bridge: Marcus Aurelius, Charlemagne, the master builder Hans Puchsbaum, Maria Theresa and Joseph Haydn, among twelve in all. At noon they all file past to music.

The parade opens with Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher emperor who, according to some ancient sources, died at Vindobona in the year 180.

4What to look for

• The clock's scale: there are no hands; the figure glides past a ruler marked in minutes.
• The bronze canopy of the fountain, held up by columns.
• The 1950s buildings, a legacy of the 1945 bombing.