In 1751, Jean Rahier, a clockmaker from the village of Olne near Verviers (now Belgium), presented this clock to Célestin de Jonghe, abbot of Saint Hubert monastery, to thank him for admitting him to the abbey as a lay brother and servant. Rahier was 56 years old at the time, and the complex mechanism he created for this timepiece testifies to his long experience: the clock shows the time of day, the day of the week, the day of the month, the signs of the zodiac and the phases of the moon.

During the advance of French revolutionary troops into the Duchy of Luxembourg, the monks at Saint Hubert monastery had stored the clock away for safety at Neumünster Abbey in Luxembourg City. After the city was captured on 7 June 1795, French authorities ordered the confiscation and public sale of many ecclesiastical goods. But the astronomical clock was not sold: on the 11th of Ventôse in year IV of the French Republican calendar (1 March 1796), the authorities decided to place it temporarily in the council room of the new Département des Forêts in the present Grand Ducal Palace.

The French authorities had chosen this object for a museum they wanted to create in this new administrative region. However, this plan was never realized. In 1854, the Grand Ducal government had the clock transferred to the museum of the Archaeological Society, ancestor to today’s National Museum of History and Art. It is the only object in existence today about which it can be said with certainty that it was already – in the late 18th century – intended to be exhibited in a public museum in Luxembourg. Exhibited at our Marché-aux-Poissons location since 1978, Jean Rahier’s astronomical clock is now the first object that visitors encounter in the prologue section of their visit to the MNAHA.