Digitized exhibitions

Exhibition: An Infinite Number of Worlds in a Single Collection – The Lipník nad Bečvou Castle Library in the Historical Building of the National Museum presents rare examples of old prints from the book collection of the Dietrichstein Castle Library, comprising a total of more than 21,000 volumes, which stand out for their uniqueness, high-quality craftsmanship, and beautiful illustrations.

The exhibition at the Historical Building of the National Museum focuses on the life and work of Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813), one of the most significant typographers and type designers in history. Bodoni, who came from a family of printers, founded the Royal Printing House in Parma and later his own private workshop, which produced typographically exquisite works.

The exhibition *My Country* commemorates Bedřich Smetana and one of his most significant compositions as part of the Year of Czech Music and the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Through authentic notes, correspondence, and, above all, scores, it presents the individual symphonic poems as the composer himself conceived them, the historical context in which they were created, and the reactions they elicited during significant historical moments in our history.

Books in the Šalamoun StyleBook illustrator Eva Natus-Šalamounová (1934–2014) and her husband Jiří Šalamoun (1935–2022)—who is known to the Czech public, among other things, as the creator of the legendary Maxipes Fík—are connected not only by the focus of their work, but also by two countries —the Czech Republic and Germany.

The exhibition Mysterious Nubia in the Historical Building of the National Museum commemorates the international action to save endangered monuments in the historical territory of Nubia, which was declared by UNESCO 65 years ago. Thanks to the Czechoslovak expeditions and the participation in the findings of the then Czechoslovak Institute of Egyptology of the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, the National Museum's collections have managed to preserve the exceptional cultural heritage of the Lower Nubia region.

The exhibition titled Possible Forms of the Book presents part of the book production of Eliska Čabalová, who presents both artistic bindings of mostly contemporary bibliophilic works and some of her original books and book projects. The exhibition offers a view of the book from several angles and presents the possibilities of processing in terms of content, materials and craftsmanship.

The exhibition The Most Beautiful Czech Books of 2023 (NČKR) presents the most interesting book design from last year. The collection of titles - the winning books in a total of seven main categories, including the shortlist; and books that received one of five special prizes - was selected this spring from more than three hundred entries by an expert jury appointed by the Minister of Culture.

The exhibition The Story of the Chateau Library Újezd Svatého Kříže in the Historical Building of the National Museum presents the fate of the book collection, but also of the now defunct Baroque chateau in Domažlice through preserved exhibits, period photographs and reproductions of paintings. The exhibition offers some of the works from this unique library, especially from the fields of history, heraldry, law, medicine, theology and other disciplines.

The oldest ceramic statue in the world - the Venus of Věstonice, dating from the Young Palaeolithic period of 29-25 thousand years BC, was last seen in the National Museum in 2014. Almost exactly nine years later, it returns to Prague as part of the Moravian Museum's exhibition The Oldest Jewellery & Body Adornments.

The 1950s is one of the darkest periods of our modern history. A period of political trials, judicial murders, lawlessness and the destruction of democratic principles of state governance, for which the ruling Communist Party of Czechoslovakia is responsible. The totalitarian regime affected all areas of the social fabric of Czechoslovakia, including the economy, culture, politics and the country's foreign anchorage.

Eight photographic categories were announced this year. 234 photographers competed, submitting over six thousand images. Entries were submitted electronically throughout the month of September.

The exhibition entitled The Great Books of Music in the Historical Building of the National Museum and the National Library of the Czech Republic presents the most beautiful and precious musical manuscripts of the pre-Blohemian literary fraternities from the collections of both institutions. Due to their value, they are exhibited only rarely and for a short time, and the exhibition therefore offers a unique opportunity to see them.

The set of 36 cards dates back to 1621 and in allegorical form depicts the defeat of the Czech Estates and the fate of the "Winter King" Frederick the Great and other important personalities of the Estates' Revolt. The original set of copper engravings has survived in only two copies. One of them is part of the so-called Troilus Collection, a set of almost two hundred prints from the early 17th century, which the National Museum has in its collections.

Contemporary Czech bibliophile production and artistic bookbinding from the work of Lubomir and Miroslava Krupka. The uniqueness of their work lies in the complete precise processing of the book, from the production of the author's hand-drawn papers, hand typesetting of the text and printing to the arrangement of the book block with artistic bookbinding.

The smaller exhibition, located in the showcases of the eastern hall of the Historical Building, presents the expeditions of the National Museum, united above all by a desire for knowledge that transcends borders. It presents a selection of the most important historical expeditions, which illustrate the institution's long tradition of research, right up to contemporary expeditions.

It's up to me what the Earth will be like - that's the motto of the new exhibition, which will show you how you can make a practical contribution to environmental protection. It introduces the topic of sustainability through concrete examples from everyday life and encourages you to think about what you can do for the world around you. This is the first exhibition at the National Museum that deals purely with the topic of sustainability and environmental friendliness and tries to embrace this topic in a comprehensive way.

The exhibition project We will never surrender!, prepared by the National Museum together with the Military Historical Institute Prague, commemorates the 80th anniversary of Operation Anthropoid and other significant events of 1942. It guides through the reality of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the events and fates associated with the 38 days of the second martial law between 27 May and 3 July 1942.

The interactive augmented reality exhibition, artistically rendered by graphic designer Pavel Fuksa, shows how scientific progress and innovation are helping to realise the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These goals for transforming our world were adopted by all UN member states in 2015. Among others, they are working with a plan to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve gender equality or avert climate threats by 2030.

The Czechoslovak Nightingale was born on 21 October 1952 in Bratislava to an English mother, Ruth Gale, and a Slovak father, Šimon Žbirka. He composed and sang songs in both languages of his parents, was a Beatles fan, co-founded the band Modus in 1977 and became the first Slovak Golden Nightingale in 1982. He has been a professional musician for more than half a century.

This year, the National Museum will again showcase the best that the Czech Press Photo competition has to offer. On large-format photographs you will admire not only the winning images of the 27th year of this prestigious competition, but also the photographs that emerged from this year's very first year of the Czech Photo Junior competition for young photographers from primary and secondary schools.

The fame of Bedřich Smetana's personality was enhanced in the 20th century by the development of the recording of music on sound carriers and, due to the nature of music that does not need an interpreter, their gradual spread throughout the world. This made it possible to listen to the music not only on concert stages but also, and repeatedly, in the home.

Take a look at a selection of Czech book covers of the 20th century from the collections of the Department of Book Culture of the National Museum Library. The exhibition shows the artistic transformation of book covers across a century - you will see examples from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, from the period between the World Wars, examples from the production of state publishers from the 1950s to the 1980s and from the production of private publishers from the end of the 20th century;

The Chauro collection, which represents the largest existing collection of Bohemian coins and medals from the 10th to the 19th centuries, will undoubtedly attract both the professional and the general public. Another section is devoted to numismatic uniquenesses from antiquity to the 20th century, illustrating the extraordinary quality of the National Museum's collections.

Bedřich Smetana, Antonín Dvořák, Leoš Janáček, Bohuslav Martinů - four great names of Czech music that became a worldwide phenomenon. Different generations, style and distinctive handwriting. Their works are different, yet they have something in common. An unmistakable character that comes from Czech roots and creates the image of Czech culture all over the world.

The National Museum and the Slovak National Museum have prepared a project called Czech-Slovak/Slovak-Czech Exhibition to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the common state. The exhibition tells the compelling story of how the initially unrealistic project of Czechoslovakia became a reality, brings together the coexistence of Czechs and Slovaks in a common state and shows what united and divided us.

The exhibition "Olympic Stories" traces the achievements of Czech athletes from their participation in the 1908 Olympic Games in London through to the 2024 Olympics in Paris. It features items from the National Museum’s sports collections—many of which have never been exhibited before—as well as unique loans. The exhibition was organized by the National Museum in cooperation with the Czech Olympic Committee.

In the New Building of the National Museum you can visit the exhibition of the 29th year of the prestigious journalistic competition Czech Press Photo.

The exhibition entitled By the White Trail, prepared by the National Museum together with the Ski Association of the Czech Republic on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the founding of this association, will present objects from the history and present of Czech skiing. In the exhibition you will be able to see for the first time a unique collection of Olympic and championship medals of our most important skiers from the second half of the 20th century.

The exhibition First Ladies - Fashion and Style in the New Building of the National Museum presents the clothing etiquette of the wives of Czech and Czechoslovak presidents. It will take you through a period of one hundred years and bring you closer to the changing times and social climate, but also to the different approach to fashion of the twelve First Ladies, from Charlotte Masaryk to the current First Lady.

After more than twenty years of the Czech national pavilions being built using the "Design & Build" method, Ondřej Soška, the Commissioner General for EXPO 2025, after consulting with experts from various fields, decided to return to the approach used to build pavilions in Brussels (1958), Montreal (1967) and Osaka (1970), for example, and to select an architectural design in an open and transparent one-stage competition. This competition was also conducted according to the rules and recommendations of the Czech Chamber of Architects.

The exhibition highlights the historical role and possible uses of preserved objects from ideologically formed collections in present days through the Collection of the Museum of the Labour Movement. The exhibition in the New Building of the National Museum presents contemporary objects from the collections of the party museums that were created in Czechoslovakia and Soviet satellites in the second half of the 20th century.

On the occasion of the 80th birthday of one of our greatest sports legends, Věra Čáslavská, the National Museum has prepared an exhibition that will introduce you to her life and sporting career. In addition to unique photographs, you will have the opportunity to see together for the first time the most comprehensive collection of her medals and awards.

Get acquainted with the rich history of Czechoslovak and contemporary Czech volleyball in the exhibition of the National Museum and the Czech Volleyball Association.You will see not only the rich historical collections of the Department of History of Physical Education and Sport, but also current volleyball trends contributed by the Czech Volleyball Association.

Traveling beyond the borders of one's home region is inherently linked to the dissemination and practice of music, whether it be the wandering of itinerant musicians or the carefully logistically prepared and planned tours of superstars. Take a tour at the Czech Museum of Music!

Composers and musicians have long noticed the lilting voices of birds, the roars of beasts or the mysterious signals of insects. Animals have thus directly inspired composers to write many beautiful compositions. The animal becomes the subject of musical representation as a specific being or as a bearer of certain characteristics.

During his eleven years of exploration in southern Africa, the traveller Dr. Emil Holub collected tens of thousands of objects, made observations covering the fields of natural history and ethnography, hunted game, and studied the ethnic groups he encountered on his travels. His likeness with a typical tropical helmet is almost iconic. To this day, his immense popularity has been exploited by various artistic and advertising projects, shaping and distorting the travellers into an image that has become almost cult-like.

The exhibition Around the World in 80 Days revisits the work of French writer Jules Verne (1828-1905). Jules Verne has been well known in the Czech cultural milieu since the 19th century and his books are still popular and published today. His main motif is the mad wager of an English gentleman, invented as if in passing while discussing a newspaper in a London club.

The exhibition Faces of War explains how the inhabitants of different parts of the world legitimized their participation in warfare through religious ideology and how through fighting and bloodshed they clarified their relationship to the gods and to other people, how leaders and rulers built their position through the archetype of the warrior.

The exhibition presented photographs by one of the most famous Czech travellers Enrique Stanko Vraz (1860-1932). The theme of the photographs was the life of local people, architecture and nature.

The exhibition At Home in Siberia will present Siberia as the habitat of many peoples who have managed to adapt to the harsh natural conditions. However, Siberia is home not only to people, but also to animals and plants, and it is here that visitors will begin to learn about this vast and remote part of the world. The outdoor section will introduce the three largest Siberian biomes - tundra, taiga and steppe - and their nature, as well as pastoralism and hunting as the most widespread means of human livelihood.

A scarf is a practical and festive item of daily use, a fashionable clothing accessory and a device used as a head or neck covering or as an ornament. It can also be a clothing item. The various ways of tying scarves around the head have a rich history. There are religious and practical reasons behind them. Historically, it is not exclusively a feminine element, but also a masculine one.

The exhibition Otevřená cesta / Phundrado drom is a curatorial "illumination" of the art collections of the Museum of Romani Culture and underlines the importance of the museum itself as a unique institution, the only one of its kind in the wider European context.

Do you like to travel in the rural regions of our country? Then your eyes must have been drawn many times to the preserved examples of traditional rural architecture - the lomenice of North Bohemian cottages, half-timbered farmhouses in Cheb, squat timbered buildings in Wallachia or richly painted brick architecture in Slovácko. Their current appearance is the result of a long-term development that generations of ethnographers, architects and artists have been trying to capture since the end of the 19th century.

What did the bread taste like, fresh out of the oven, with a crispy crust blessed with a cross? How did it taste after two Sundays, broken into milk or brynda? And who spread fragrant butter on a slice of bread for the first time? In the exhibition of the Ethnographic Museum we will show you how bread and butter were made in the past.

Get to know the colourful spiritual world of rural people of the 18th and 19th centuries in the exhibition of the Ethnographic Museum. We will reveal a fraction of the extensive ethnographic collection hiding artifacts related to religious life of the community, but also objects related to everyday activities and personal piety.

Since the Middle Ages, the Vltava River has provided a livelihood for many "people from the water", especially the so-called swimmers - rafters and shifters. The transport of logs and other raw materials by water was difficult and sometimes dangerous, requiring not only fortes but also well-coordinated cooperation. However, swimmers and other "water people" increasingly felt the lack of help with the health and life problems that their livelihood brought.

In May 2023, a selected part of the collection of the National Museum - Antonín Dvořák Museum was registered under the name of the Antonín Dvořák Archive in the UNESCO International Memory of the World Register, which collects the most important documentary evidence of world culture. After the Leoš Janáček Archive, which was added to the Register in 2018, this is the second collection of a Czech composer to be included on this prestigious list.

Antonín Dvořák represents a quite exceptional personality for Czech culture. He was one of the few Czech artists to achieve world fame during his lifetime. The exhibition Antonín Dvořák and Fame presents the many awards the composer collected during his lifetime. The last farewell to the composer, which became a social event, is also commemorated.

The exhibition will present original historical costumes of the composer's operas from the collection of the Bedřich Smetana Museum. At the same time, it provides a glimpse of the restoration work that allows the costumes to be seen again as they were seen by the audience in the second half of the 19th century at the Provisional and National Theatre.

The fame of Bedřich Smetana's personality was enhanced in the 20th century by the development of the recording of music on sound carriers and, due to the nature of music that does not need an interpreter, their gradual spread throughout the world. This made it possible to listen to the music not only on concert stages but also, and repeatedly, in the home.

The exhibition at the National Memorial at Vítkov presents the story of a unique and symbolic place that represents the honour, courage, patriotism and participation of Czechoslovak soldiers in the World Wars.

When the first teaching aids and instructional films for driving schools began to appear in the early 1960s, they often did not reach teachers but remained locked in cupboards. This unfortunate trend was attempted to change by Jiří Pour, a member of the driving school directorate at the time. He initiated the "National Parades of Teaching Aids", the first of which took place in 1964 in Vyškov.

The travelling panel exhibition of the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial presents 15 selected life stories of Czechoslovak prisoners and prisoners of war, of whom approximately 4,500 were interned in the Flossenbürg concentration camp complex. Thanks to biographical research, the stories have been discovered that will not only impress the visitor with the great life changes caused by imprisonment in the concentration camp.

The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution of the First Czechoslovak Republic, which enacted women's suffrage. This was the first time that the right to vote was actually guaranteed to all women in the Czech lands and under the same conditions as men. This marked the end of many years of efforts by Czech women activists to secure the right of women to vote and to be elected.

The exhibition, prepared by the West Bohemian Museum in Pilsen in cooperation with the National Museum, features puppets made by artists associated with the Alfa Theatre in recent history. You will get to know the work of Ivan Nesveda, Pavel Kalfus, Iva Marečková, Hynek Dřízhal and Jaroslav Milfajt. Life-size mannequin puppets were created for the fairy tale Goldilocks, while the story of the Dogmen was told by marionettes.

The 100 Years of Modern Magic exhibition commemorates one century since the founding of the first magic society in our country - the Magic Club of Prague. It also points out the interest in the association of those who practiced magic in associations, clubs and various organizations. Thanks to Pavel Langer for the loan of the items.

Take a look at unique objects and photographs commemorating the protest picnics that took place under the banner of Saturday for Neighbourhood along the entire Czech border in May and June 2020. 

The water goblin is perhaps the most famous and popular supernatural creature in Bohemia. At first it was a downright evil, tricky monster living in the depths of rivers, streams and lakes, in mill dams and deserted pools. It broke ice, raised waters, broke dams and caused floods, lured people to the water and drowned them.

The exhibition, which was created in cooperation with the National Museum, is reminiscent of a theatrical fable inspired by Josef Kajetán Tyl's South Bohemian legend about the bagpiper who played to the devils under the gallows and saved himself only by shouting "God himself will pay you, dear sirs"!

Tyl's play premiered at the Royal Estates Theatre in Prague in 1847 and soon became very popular. It was performed by travelling companies, amateur groups and professional theatres. It is still performed today and has inspired opera and film makers.

Exhibition of puppets and art designs from the National Museum's theatre collection. Devil, devil, Satan, hell-monger, devil, impure, black hunter, blackguard, worm, antichrist, worm-eater, devil, evil... Many forms of personified evil have been named in Czech, which fights the principle of good with two main weapons: temptation and deception. Its purpose is to tempt people to sin and then punish them.

The exhibition of historical photographs offers short walks and individual stops in the castle and park between 1918-1944. The author of many of them is Sidonie Nádherná.

The exhibition officially began exactly 80 years after the first broadcast of the pair's recordings. They were sent from New York to London and from there they were broadcast via the BBC to the then Czechoslovakia.