The Royal Eise Eisinga Planetarium in Franeker is an orrery built into a canal house. Eise Eisinga, a wool carder and amateur astronomer, built it between 1774 and 1781 in his own living room. It is called the oldest working planetarium in the world. William I, the first King of the Netherlands, was so impressed that he bought the house.
The model is built to a scale of 1 millimeter to 1 million kilometers. It sits in the timber roof above the ceiling, where about 10,000 handmade nails form the gears. A pendulum clock drives the planets in real time. The Sun is painted at the center of the ceiling, and the Earth is a golden orb on a wire. The model needs a manual reset every four years for February 29.
It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in September 2023.
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