World's Largest Cuckoo Clock

The world's largest cuckoo clock in Schönach is a functioning timepiece built into a full-sized house at the edge of the village. Every half-hour the cuckoo emerges from above the door — a bird roughly the size of a large dog — and the clock strikes. You can go inside to see the mechanism at work: massive wooden gears, a pendulum the height of a person, and the weights that drive the whole thing.

It is unabashedly a tourist attraction, but one that comes with genuine craft credentials. Cuckoo clock making is a centuries-old tradition in the Black Forest, and Schönach has been a centre of the trade since the 18th century. The workshops that still produce handmade clocks in the region use techniques and materials that have changed little in two hundred years.

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The record for the world's largest cuckoo clock has been contested and reclaimed multiple times over the decades, with villages across the Black Forest competing for the title. Schönach has held it since 1980, when the current house-sized clock was constructed. You can walk inside the mechanism — the pendulum alone is taller than a person.