Museum of Communism, Prague: tickets, hours and what to see

What the museum covers

The museum presents everyday life, politics, history, sport, the economy, education and art under communism, together with the propaganda in the media, the people’s militia, the army, the police including the secret police, censorship, the courts and the institutions of repression, among them show trials and political labour camps. The period runs from the “February coup” of 1948 to the Velvet Revolution of 1989.

The Czech law that set up the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes defines the period of communist totalitarian power as running from 25 February 1948 to 29 December 1989 (Act No. 181/2007, section 2).

The three sections

The exhibition is arranged in three sections that the museum calls “The dream”, “The reality” and “The nightmare”. The first covers the birth of Czechoslovakia, the Munich Agreement and “Victorious February”. The second covers nationalisation, Communist propaganda, the socialist shop and the secret police. The third covers political trials, labour camps, the occupation of August 1968 and the Velvet Revolution.

Rooms you walk through

The museum has almost 1,500 m² on two levels, with 62 panels illustrated with photographs from the archive of the ČTK news agency, the Security Services Archive and Czech photographers, together with short videos, posters and objects. You walk through reconstructions of a shock worker’s workshop, a school classroom, a child’s bedroom and an interrogation room.

The documentary and the shop

Every 20 minutes the museum shows the documentary “A Time of Shame, Silence, and Hope” by Josef Císařovský, about the years from 1969 to 1989. The museum does not state its length; the partner’s listing says about 15 minutes. There is also a shop with books, posters and postcards.

Dates to have in mind

These dates come from encyclopaedia entries, not from the museum. In February 1948 the Communist Party took full control of the government: twelve non-communist ministers resigned on 21 February, and on 25 February President Beneš accepted a new government. The Prague Spring ran from 5 January 1968, when Alexander Dubček became first secretary of the Party, until 21 August 1968, when the Soviet Union and four other Warsaw Pact members invaded.

Charter 77, a civic initiative whose founders included Václav Havel and Jan Patočka, took its name from a document of January 1977. The Velvet Revolution lasted from 17 to 28 November 1989, and Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia on 29 December 1989.

The move to the Old Customs House

The museum was in a building on Na příkopě from 2001 and moved to the Old Customs House on 21 August 2017, according to the Czech encyclopaedia entry. The museum’s own site gives the current address: V Celnici 1031/4, with the entrance on náměstí Republiky, between a supermarket and a restaurant.