National Museum, Historical Building

Museum · New Town (Nové Město) — head of Wenceslas SquarePrague,Czechia

The building closing Wenceslas Square, its sandstone front still patched where Warsaw Pact troops shot it in 1968, a staircase climbing to a domed hall.

The National Museum closes the top of Wenceslas Square, and the first thing to read on it is the stonework. Pale patches are set across the sandstone of the front where troops of the Warsaw Pact opened fire on the building in August 1968, apparently taking it for a government office or a radio station. The repairs filled the damage rather than recutting the surface, so the marks can still be traced from the pavement, one by one. Inside, the building is organised around a staircase that climbs the full height of it to a domed hall at the top. Josef Schulz built all of it between 1885 and 1891, when Czech was still fighting for standing as a language of scholarship inside a German-speaking empire. The scale was deliberate. An unexploded bomb came through into the entrance hall in May 1945, during the Prague Uprising, so the front is not the only part of the house that has been repaired. Climb as far as the dome and you can stand in the gallery and look straight back down the slope of Wenceslas Square.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Book the dome separately if you want it — It runs on timed tickets with few places, is not included by default and is the one part of the building that is not step-free.
The two buildings are linked underground — The historic house and the 1970s block behind it share a ticket and a tunnel, so you do not have to go back out to the street between them.
Give the staircase and the Pantheon more time than the display cases — They are the reason the building was put up, and the collections around them have been rearranged many times since.
Come at opening — The square outside is one of the busiest places in the country, and the entrance hall fills quickly once the coaches reach the top of it.

Things to do

1
Trace the shots across the stone
Stand on the far side of the road with the whole front in view and let your eye run along it at first and second floor height. The patched hits appear as paler stone, scattered rather than grouped. Once you have found one you will find twenty, and the facade stops being scenery.
2
Climb to the Pantheon and read the names
Take the main staircase up rather than heading for a gallery, and stop in the domed hall at the top. Walk the ring of busts and read the names and dates aloud to yourself. Almost none of them will be familiar, which is exactly the gap the building was put up to close.
3
Look back down the boulevard from the dome
From the dome gallery, turn and face the square. Wenceslas Square reads as what it is from up here: a long straight slope aimed directly at this building. Every crowd that ever filled it was pointed this way, and the front of the museum still has the holes to show for it.