Crazy4Prague

Museum



Jewish Museum
U staré skoly 1
110 00 Prague 1
The Jewish Museum in Prague (Czech: Statní židovské museum) is a museum of Jewish heritage. The Maisel Synagogue is one of several buildings in the collection of the Jewish Museum in Prague The Jewish Museum in Prague was founded in 1906 by historian Dr. Hugo Lieben and Dr. Augustin Stein, who later became head of the Prague Jewish Community. The idea was to preserve artifacts from the Prague synagogues demolished during the Urban renewal of the old Jewish Quarter in the beginning of the 20th century. In 1942 the Nazis regime established the Central Jewish Museum, with the goal of commemorationg the heritage of an exterminated people by collecting notable objects of Jewish ceremonial art. Artifacts were shipped to the museum from all the Jewish communities and synagogues of Bohemia and Moravia. The museum reopened under the post-War Communist government, but began to flourish after the Czech lands were liberated from Communism. Buildings in the Museum's collection in the Prague's Jewish Quarter received significant damage, during the 2002 European floods.

Museum of Decorative Arts
Ulice 17 Listopada 2 Staré Mesto
Prague 1 Housed in a fin-de-siècle building which is itself a work of art, the Museum of Decorative Arts was founded in 1885 to display exquisite examples of European decorative arts that tread a fine line between fine and applied art. Only a fraction of the museum's collection is exhibited, but the pieces on display are superb, including a range of beautiful Bohemian glass and ceramics.

National Museum (Národní museum)
Václavské námestí 68
115 79 Prague 1



The National Museum in Prague was founded on April 15, 1818, with the first president of the Society of the Patriotic Museum being named Count Sternberk, which would serve as the trustee and operator of the museum. Early on, the focus of the museum was centered on natural sciences, partially because Count Sternberk was a botanist, mineralogist, and eminent phytopaleontologist, but also because of the natural science slant of the times, as perpetrated by Emperor Joseph II of Austria. The National Museum stands at the top of Wenceslas Square and contains extensive collections of prehistoric artefacts, mineralogy and petrology, palaeontology, zoology and anthropology. The permanent exhibition of the Prehistory of Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia is divided into two sections. One depicts the concurrent development of the varied cultures in the area and the other contains archaeological discoveries and models of fortified dwellings and ritual burials. The collection of the Department of Mineralogy and Petrology has over 200,000 specimens of minerals, rocks, gemstones, meteorites, tektites and dynamic geology, but only around 12,000 are on display. The palaeontological collections contain specimens from the Bohemian Massif from the Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Cainozoic eras, as well as a section called Life During the Course of the Earth's Geological History that charts the development of the organic world. The Department of Zoology has more than 5000 creatures exhibited, including a giant sea sponge from Java, the world's largest-known butterfly and a varied collection of shells from the giant clam to the sea mollusc. The anthropology exhibition demonstrates the methods used by anthropologists to obtain information by studying ancient human bones through osteometry (the measuring of bones) and osteomorphoscopy (description of bones). Although not all on display, the Department of Anthropology's collection is one of the largest in the world.

The Museum of Military History
Schwarzenberský palác Hradcanské námestí 2
Hradcany
Prague 1

Housed in an impressive mid-sixteenth-century Renaissance palace, the Museum of Military History contains Czech military memorabilia from the thirteenth century to the end of World War I. The collection includes scale models of battles and details of historic campaign strategy, as well as uniforms, weapons and the history of evolving military technologies. The façade of the Schwarzenberský palác is decorated in the style of Italian palace architecture with exuberant sgraffiti, whilst the interior features a collection of magnificent mythological paintings.

Museum of communism
Na Příkopě 10
110 00 Praha 1

The museum focuses on the totalitarian regime from the February coup in 1948 to its rapid collapse in November 1989. The theme of the Museum is "Communism- the Dream, the Reality, and the Nightmare" and visitors will be treated to a fully immersive experience. Immersive factories, a historical schoolroom, an Interrogation Room, or the video clips in our Television Time Machine are all part of the experience. The museum is a great introduction before you step back even further in time and experience the wonders of The Golden City. This is the first museum in Prague (since the Velvet Revolution) exclusively devoted to a system established in the sphere of the former Soviet Union. The original items and meticulous installations containing authentic artefacts are displayed in the three main rooms (please see the virtual tour). The Museum of Communism was created for the display and interpretation of objects and historic documents. It stands as an authoritative historical narrative relating to this 20th-century phenomenon. It is, however, in no way intended by the organisers to be a filter for contemporary political issues in the Czech Republic.