The Prague City Museum - entire history of Prague
The neo-renaissance building of the Prague City Museum is a sight itself and it contains a well organized permanent exhibition which covers the history of Prague since the prehistorical times to the year 1784 when the Prague’s independent towns united.
With no need to dig deep in soil you can have a look at the first inhabitants of the Prague region, to see where they came from, what they looked like, how and where they lived, find about their eating habits and fashion trends, try to understand their thinking. Starting at the stone age, you will make your way up the time stream along reconstructions of settlements, graves, collections of jewelery and many other artefacts until you reach the time when the first buildings of the Prague Castle and Vysehrad overlooked the forests round the Vltava river valley.
The time journey is still far from over when entering an exhibition dedicated to the medieval Prague. The life back then is originaly illustrated by a range of household items, also by various evidence of the developing economy of the town, the education and religious life of its citizens.
The oldest views of Prague, blocks from the first printing houses and even a bigger range of daily life items will sketch a detailed picture of the late gothic and renaissance Prague.
The baroque Prague is reflected mainly through various forms of art. There is a collection of baroque sculpture and paintings by Skreta, Brandl, Hirschely or Grund.
The best known highlight of the museum is a cardboard model of Prague by Antonin Langweil. This talented artist, earning his life as a servant in the univerzity library, created an acurate miniature of the city as it looked like 150 years ago. Scaled 1:480, the model is two-by-two metres large and it comprises of more than 2000 buildings. The details are unbeliavable, covering all the architectual elements of the buildings, but also capturing the real life – you can see broken windows, a ladder leaning against a wall or barrels on the ground. The houses are numbered, there are front gardens, trees, lanterns and the roofs are painted in their real colours. In many cases, the model is the only evidence of no longer existing buildings and it has been used to help to renovate facades of several historical houses.
| Address: | Na Porici 52, 180 00 Praha 8 |
| email: | muzeum@muzeumprahy.cz |
| Phone: | +420 224 816 773 |
| How to get there: | Metro B Florenc |
| GPS | 50°5’23.74”N,14°26’17.93”E |
| Opening hours: | Tue to Sun 9 am to 6 pm. |
| Admission: | 80 CZK full, 160 CZK families, 30 CZK discount, children up to 6 for free |