My final day in Prague ran until my train home at 16:30. What to do?
Not the Old Town – nice to look at, overrun with tourists / stag do’s / hen parties.
The National Museum kept being recommended and since it was likely temperature controlled – this being anew the hottest day of the year – I took a short metro journey to Muzeum station, and popped up at the entrance to the New Building rather than the Historical Building. I think this accident of geolocation actually worked in my favour.
New Building
Highlight of the New Building is its permanent exhibition History of the 20th Century. Of course, this is presented with a focus on the Czech / Czechoslovakian viewpoint. As the webpage describes, there is an engaging – dare I say immersive – entrance to this exhibition, the Time Elevator. It’s a circular room, with a 360º projection above your head. The “elevator doors” close, and with a literal rumble – the floor actually shakes – you begin to “rise” through time, the projection around you constantly shifting from event to event from the early 1900s to the 2000s.
Following that, a wide-ranging series of artefacts are presented in the rest of the space. The Hall of Busts displays historical Czech figures across the 20th century, a walk through a series of apartments furnished in the styles of the times (the 1990s office was reminiscent of my home setup, replete with bulky CRT monitor and dial-up modem), plus some album covers and posters detailing quite why the 1980s were both awful and amazing.
Down a couple of floors and to a temporary exhibition Františka Plamínková and Us. Unsurprisingly I knew nothing about Františka, but she was, by this account, a prominent campaigner and advocate for women’s rights in Czechoslovakia, before her murder in a WWII concentration camp.
This quote stood out to me, especially given the [gestures hands wildly] state of the world today:
“Certain ways and means are forbidden to a Democrat, ways and means to control others without their consent, ways and means that they would never tolerate for themselves.”
–– Františka Plamínkova to the Czechoslovakian Senate, 1935
Skipping over the Children’s Museum floor, for I am only sometimes a child, the route to the Historical Museum takes you through an underground passageway. Since I was doing the whole tour the “wrong way around”, it was not immediately obvious what I was seeing.
On both sides of the passageway, projectors display a continuous sequence of images, either formed from individual photographs that merge into a panorama, or cleverly crafted animations forming another journey from the origins of the universe to the present day of Prague. It’s a truly impressive way to make use of what would perhaps otherwise be a dull corridor with some paintings hung on the wall. Some images in the gallery below.
Historical Museum
This part is much more the “traditional museum” style: many permanent exhibitions and detailed research into historical themes.
I’ll be honest: I was experiencing museum burnout by now – I can’t last more than an hour or so in a museum – so I only briefly looked through the exhibitions. They are mostly what you would expect: natural history features heavily, and deep dives into theological and nobility studies.
The atrium and cupola are spectacular though, even if my bugbear of people making themselves the subject of photos was in full view.
Nevertheless, I was happy to experience it, and my routing via the New Building first was actually better for me.
Summing it all up
I really enjoyed Prague as a city, as a destination. Despite the heat, I and my travelling partners explored quite a bit. The transport network is extensive, mostly based on street trams, alongside buses and the metro. (A word of caution: those Tatra T3 trams with their huge glass windows and no air-conditioning are not designed for hot days… but rare are air-con trams in Prague at all).
Apart from the accommodation, the city is reasonably affordable – meals, drinks and entrance fees are all reasonable.
My top tip: head out across the river away from the Old Town, into Prague 7. It’s more diverse, less touristy, and has great food options – some with added cats.
