Mucha Museum

The Mucha Museum, located in Prague’s Kaunický Palace, is dedicated to the life and works of Art Nouveau artist Alfons Mucha. Opened in 1998, it features nearly 100 original pieces from the collection of tennis player Ivan Lendl, including posters, paintings, and personal items. The museum offers an AI guide for interactive learning and a shop with Mucha-themed gifts. It’s the only institution in Prague exhibiting exclusively Mucha’s originals.

Planning your visit

Alfons Mucha created the visual language of art nouveau almost by accident. Working in Paris in 1894, he was the only artist available over Christmas when Sarah Bernhardt needed a poster in a hurry; the result — an elongated, decorative, almost Byzantine treatment of the actress — caused a sensation and defined a style within months. The museum holds nearly 100 originals covering the Paris posters, decorative panels, drawings, pastels, photographs and personal objects.

The collection came substantially from the tennis player Ivan Lendl, one of the most significant private collectors of Mucha's work.

What the museum only gestures at is the work Mucha considered his real achievement: the Slav Epic, twenty enormous canvases on Slavic history painted over eighteen years, which is exhibited elsewhere and requires a separate trip. Knowing that the poster artist spent his later life on monumental nationalist history painting changes how the commercial work reads.

Mucha was arrested by the Gestapo in 1939 and died shortly after his interrogation.

Bookable options include entry tickets and tickets with audio guides. The museum is central, near Wenceslas Square, and takes about an hour. Current availability is listed below.