National Museum

The National Museum in Prague is the largest museum in the Czech Republic, housing nearly 14 million items across various fields, including natural history, history, arts, music, and librarianship.

Planning your visit

Prague's National Museum sits at the top of Wenceslas Square, and its neo-Renaissance building is a national landmark in its own right — it appears in photographs of the 1968 Soviet invasion, still bearing bullet damage that was later repaired, and of the 1989 Velvet Revolution crowds. It reopened in 2018 after a seven-year reconstruction. The collection is enormous and genuinely encyclopaedic: nearly 14 million items across natural history, history, arts, music and library holdings, with mineralogy, palaeontology, zoology and prehistory galleries alongside historical exhibitions.

The scale means selectivity. The building itself — the marble staircase, the Pantheon hall under the dome — is worth time independent of the collections, and the dome viewing gallery gives a view down the length of Wenceslas Square. A new underground passage links the historic building to the New Building next door, which holds additional exhibitions.

Bookable options include skip-the-line tickets, tickets with online audio guides, and private tours. Several formats combine the museum with wider Prague itineraries — Old Town walking tours, Prague Castle, and the Old Town Hall with its astronomical clock — using the museum as one component of a full day. Given the square's location at the head of the city's main boulevard, it is easy to reach and easy to combine. Current availability is listed below.