Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
courseoftwentyyearsfortheZemskábankaandconnectedbyakindofBridgeofSighssus-
pended over Nekázanka. The style is 1890s neo-Renaissance, though there are Art Nouveau
elements, such as Jan Preisler's gilded mosaics and Ladislav Šaloun's attic sculptures. It's
worthnippingupstairstothemainbankinghalltoappreciatethefinancialmightoftheCzech
capital in the last decades of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Muzeum komunismu (Museum of Communism)
Na příkopě 10 • Daily 9am-9pm • 190Kč • 224 212 966,
muzeumkomunismu.cz
• Metro Můstek
It took an American expat to open Prague's first museum dedicated to the country's troubled
Communist past. Situated above a branch of
McDonald's
, and in the same building as a
casino,the
Muzeumkomunismu
canbefound(withsomedifficulty)onthefirstfloorofthe
Palác Savarin. The exhibition gives a brief and rather muddled rundown of Czech twentieth-
centuryhistory,accompaniedbyasuperbcollectionofCommuniststatues,uniformsandpro-
paganda posters. The overpriced admission aside, the politics are a bit simplistic - the popu-
lar postwar support for the Party is underplayed - but it's worth tracking down for the mem-
orabilia alone. There's a mock-up of a Communist classroom, a chilling StB (secret police)
room and plenty of film footage of protests throughout the period.
Mucha Museum
Panská 7 • Daily 10am-6pm • 180Kč • 224 216 415,
mucha.cz
• Metro Můstek
The
Mucha Museum
, housed in the Kaunicky palác, south off Na příkopě down Panská,
is dedicated to
Alfons Mucha
(1860-1939), probably the most famous (and popular) of all
Czech artists, at least in the West. Mucha made his name in
fin de siècle
Paris, where he
shot to fame in 1895 after designing the Art Nouveau poster
Gismonda
for the actress Sarah
Bernhardt. “Le Style Mucha” became all the rage, but the artist himself came to despise this
“commercial” period of his work, and in 1910 he moved back to his homeland and threw
himselfintothenationalcause,designingpatrioticstamps,banknotesandpostersforthenew
republic.
The whole of Mucha's career is covered in the permanent exhibition, and there's a good
selection of informal photos taken by the artist himself of his models, and of Paul Gauguin
(with whom he shared a studio) playing the harmonium with his trousers down. The only
work not represented here is his massive
Slav Epic
, which now hangs in the
Veletržní palace
,
but the excellent half-hour video (in English) covers the decade of his life he devoted to this
cycle of nationalist paintings. In the end, Mucha paid for his Czech nationalism with his life;
summoned for questioning by the Gestapo after the 1939 Nazi invasion, he died shortly after
being released.
