It is located in the municipality of Ondřejov, 35 kilometres (22 miles) southeast of Prague, Czech Republic.

The facility was constructed in 1898, by Czech amateur astronomer and entrepreneur Josef Jan Frič as a private observatory.

[1] The observatory, located at an altitude of 500 metres (1,600 ft), away from the air and light pollution of urban Prague, was administered by Charles University until the founding of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1953, which from then on operated it as part of its Astronomical Institute in conjunction with other Czechoslovak observatories.

[2] It has been responsible, among other scientific achievements, for the discovery of numerous asteroids; more recent works of astronomers from Ondřejov include examination of the trajectory and origin of the Chelyabinsk meteor.

[4] The main-belt asteroid 7204 Ondřejov, discovered by Petr Pravec in 1995, was named for the village where the observatory is located.