The National Museum, Prague

The National Museum occupies a neo-Renaissance pile designed by Josef Schulz and opened in 1891, shut for years of rebuilding and reopened in 2018. What you get is two museums joined by an underground passage: the historic building, where the architecture is half the exhibit, and the plainer New Building next door used for temporary shows. Inside the old wing a marble staircase climbs under a painted dome to the Pantheon, a hall of busts and statues of Czech writers, scientists and composers. The permanent displays are natural history and prehistory: long runs of minerals, mounted animals, fossils and bone, arranged in the old cabinet manner rather than as a modern interactive museum.

What you actually see

• The Pantheon - the domed hall of busts and statues under painted lunettes.
• The marble staircase - the grand climb that most visitors photograph before they see anything else.
• The mineral collection - hundreds of Czech and world specimens in original wooden vitrines.
• The dome gallery - the upper level, when open, looking down the length of the square.

When to go

Open year round and the obvious choice on a wet or cold day, which is exactly when it is fullest. Weekday mornings are calmest; Czech school groups take over the natural history halls by late morning. Check which temporary exhibition is running in the New Building before paying for a combined ticket, since the two halves are priced separately.

Honest expectations

The rebuilding restored the shell beautifully but the permanent displays feel old-fashioned: rows of cases, brief labels and thin English on the smaller items. Some visitors leave with the sense that they paid mainly to see a staircase. Sections close for reinstallation without much notice, and access to the dome is a separate ticket with its own queue.

Nearby

The New Building next door and the streets of the New Town below the square.