Even if you aren’t really into technology, don’t give the National Technical Museum a miss - you won’t be disappointed. This museum was founded in 1908 and holds the most important and impressive collection in the Czech Republic of historical vehicles and instruments.

The four floors of the museum hold six permanent exhibitions of over 50,000 objects and curios. In the Transport Hall you can admire over 100 trains, airplanes are suspended from the ceiling and there is a wonderful collection of cars and bicycles. Ships are represented by perfectly scaled-down models.

The Measurement of Time Hall displays clocks of all styles and sizes and some of them are so intricate it’s hard to understand the time on them. There are also astronomical instruments and charts of the heavens that make you realise just how important and advanced astronomy has been over the centuries. The Inter-camera Exhibition holds a wide range of cameras and cinematographic equipment and in the basement where the Mining Exhibition is held there is a replica of a coal mine.

Other collections include Archives with over 250 000 books and scrolls, Exact Sciences and Architecture, while in the Hobbies and Activities Section you will find minerals and gemstones, geology data and a photo collection.
There is a very good gift shop for your souvenirs and after you have visited the museum you can have a well-earned cup of tea in the museum café.

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 goal 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.

Located in the Jewish Quarter, the Museum of Decorative Arts is housed in a 19th century Neo-Renaissance building and displays examples of international historical and contemporary arts. The aim of the museum is to leave samples of art and crafts throughout-the-ages for future generations.

The ground floor of the museum holds exhibitions that change every month of art students and renowned artists. On the first floor are the permanent exhibitions of objects from the 14th century to the present day.

The Story of Fibre Exhibition has a wonderful collection of wedding dresses dating from the 14th to the 19th century and miniature dresses for porcelain dolls. In the Print and Image section you will find books and prints made on the first printing presses, photos, public notices and books on graphic arts from the late 19th and early 20th century.

The Treasury Exhibition displays metals and assorted metal objects: jewellery, candlesticks, statues, etc. The Time Machine gallery features clocks and watches from the 15th to the 20th century. In the Glass and Ceramics gallery you will find 16th – 19th century ceramics, 18 – 19th century porcelain and 20th century glass and ceramics.

There is also a small gift ‘area’ at the entrance and a very good café that is often frequented by local artists. There is a small entrance fee to the museum and a little extra for an audio guide. Entrance is free on Tuesdays from 5 to 7pm.

If you enjoy the macabre, don’t miss visiting the Museum of Medieval Torture Instruments next to the Charles Bridge. Don’t get the idea that the Czechs spent their time torturing state enemies, witches or heretics – this rather gruesome collection comes from all over Europe.
The museum is set on three floors and holds 60 different instruments of torture dating back to the Inquisition. There are many you will recognise from films, such as the rack, the Iron Maiden and stocks, and a lot that you won’t including Spanish boots, knee or head crushers, a garrotting chair and a spiked chair. Some of the exhibits are truly mind-boggling – male chastity belts and spiked instruments for anal torture.

Each instrument is accompanied by a picture showing unfortunate victims wearing expressions of very believable agony, and there are detailed explications in various languages of how the instrument was used, why and the effects it produced.

At first sight the museum might seem merely interesting, but as you visit and read about the methods of torture used by our ancestors on people who had done little other than being accused of heresy, you begin to see these instruments in a new, rather stomach-wrenching light.

The visit takes about an hour and a half and there is a museum shop where you can buy books with photos and explanations and posters, but sorry, no thumb-screws!

Housed in a Neo-Renaissance building that once was the Old Town waterworks near the Charles Bridge, the Bedrich Smetana Museum was opened in 1936 and is dedicated to Bedrich Smetana, the 19th century compositor and patriot.

Bedrich Smetana lived from 1824 to 1884 and was considered as the father of Czech music. He wrote a lot of patriotic music and his 1st Nationalist music was composed of marches used during the 1848 Prague Uprising. His best known opera “The Bartered Bride” was premiered in the new Provincial Theatre where only Czech music was played. He was a member of the society that founded the Czech National Theatre in 1884.

The museum is dedicated to his life and works and you can see many of his music scores, diaries and manuscripts. There is also a microscope under which you can admire his ear bones – he became deaf in later life. There is also a small section about musical life in the 19th century. A podium with a laser pointer will allow you to select Smetana’s and other classical music of his time.

The Prague Wax Museum is separated into two separate buildings and has over 50 figures of Czech and international personalities of the 19th to the 21st century on show.

The first museum, situated in Mostecka Street is dedicated to historical characters of the Czech Republic such as Rudolf II and his court alchemist, the Englishman Kelley, in the alchemist’s workroom, Kafka next to a shop and inn; there are also interiors of the Old Town and rooms from the Karlstejn Castle. It is a great way to discover Czech History.

The second museum located in Melantrichova Street is separated into three parts; in the first you will meet many international celebrities including Bill Clinton and Michael Jackson. In the second part you will find some of the “greatest” dictators: Lenin, Stalin and Castro among others. The third part is dedicated to Magic Prague, a multimedia complex. There is a wonderful kaleidoscope cinema showing Rudolf II, Kafka, Rasputin, Charlie Chaplin and many other famous personalities. The figures are really very well done and easily rival any of those found in any of Madame Tussaud’s wax museums in Europe.

The presence of dictators may seem a little strange, but the idea is educative as well as entertaining.

If you are interested in Czech political history, then you shouldn’t miss a visit to the Museum of Communism. The museum opened in 2001 and gives visitors an excellent view of life under the communist regime from 1948 to 1989.

In this well appointed museum, you will find posters and artefacts, including busts and statues of Lenin and Stalin, propaganda and objects from political and daily life of the period. There is a projection room that shows short films about the communist way of life notably in Prague.

You can see replicas of a schoolroom, a workshop, a typical shop, the living room in an archetypal working class home. A part of the collection deals with the communist dream of the conquest of space. There is even an interrogation room with an original noose from Pankrac Prison. Another part of the museum is dedicated to the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and here you will find a replica of the Berlin Wall, complete with graffiti.

In the gift shop you can buy posters, books, t-shirts and baseball caps. The museum offers no opinions either for or against communism; it merely presents the facts and leaves the visitor to decide for himself.

The Prague City Museum is an excellent museum and well worth visiting. Opened in the late 19th century it is devoted to the History of Prague from prehistory to the present day.

Room 1 covers the period from prehistory to medieval times and you can ask for an English text for this exhibition at the entrance desk. Here you can see objects from the many archaeological digs in and around the city. The whole museum is full with documents and weapons spanning the centuries before Prague became a single city.

As well as documents on the Nazi occupation of the city and the assassination of Reinhardt Heydrich, you will find curios such as the silk funeral cap and slippers worn by the famous astronomer Tych Brahe when he was buried in Tyn Church. Also on display is the original 1866 calendar wheel of the Astronomical Clock with the panels representing the months beautifully painted by Josef Manes.

The most interesting object in the museum is undoubtedly the wonderful 19th century replica of the city made by Antonin Langweil. This scaled-down model is amazingly detailed and is often used as a guide for buildings before they are renovated. It also shows visitors how very little Prague has changed since the 19th century.

No visit to Prague is complete without taking in the Army Museum Zizkov which is housed in the National Liberation Memorial Building. Entrance to the museum is free.

The museum comprises three halls that hold the permanent exhibitions and a 4th hall for temporary exhibitions. The three halls are devoted to Czech political and military History.
The 1914 – 1918 Hall displays the uniforms, weapons, banners and medals of the 1st World War. There is also extensive documentation of the founding of the Czechoslovak State and its struggle for recognition and independence. There are also many fine paintings and show cases presenting the memorabilia of several Czech Presidents and members of the Czechoslovak Legions.

The 1918 – 1939 Hall represents the Czech Army between the wars, with documents about foreign military operations, Czech and foreign weapons and uniforms and a complete collection of all degrees and groups of the White Lion, the highest Order of Merit.

The 1939 – 1945 Hall shows the banners and medals of various armies and models of military technical devices. This hall is mainly dedicated to the Czech Resistance fighters and the uniform of the Prime Minister of the Protectorate Alois Elias is on display. Elias was murdered by the Nazis because of his collaboration with the Resistance. There is a slide show of key military operations complete with sound effects.

The National museum (Národní muzeum) is a Czech museum institution intended to systematically establish, prepare and publicly exhibit natural scientific and historical collections. It was founded 1818 in Prague by Kašpar Maria Šternberg. Historian František Palacký was also strongly involved. At present the National Museum houses almost 14 million items from the area of natural history, history, arts, music and librarianship, located in tens of buildings. The founding of the National Museum should be seen in the context of the times, where after the French Revolution, royal and private collections of art, science, and culture were being made available to the public. The National Museum at present contains several million items of material concerning the areas of mineralogy, paleontology, mycology, botany, entomology, zoology, anthropology; and also archeology which is mostly concerned with the period from Neolithic times to the 10th century CE.

The Antonín Dvořák Museum in Prague is a museum dedicated to the great Czech composer Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904). It is part of the Czech Museum of Music which in turn is part of the complex of the National Museum. It is housed in a baroque building which was designed by the famous architect Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer at the beginning of the 18th century. Although the house itself has no particular link with the composer the Antonín Dvořák museum has been housed there since 1932. The museum displays photographs, newspaper cuttings, programmes and personal objects relating to the composer, including his viola and hispiano. The building houses a unique collection of his manuscripts and correspondence, thus providing an important centre for research into Antonín Dvořák. Concerts are held there regularly, as well as seminars, lectures and exhibitions.