Czechoslovakia's four decades behind the Iron Curtain, told through original artefacts and recreated interiors rather than text panels – Prague's Museum of Communism covers the period from the February 1948 communist takeover to the 1989 Velvet Revolution that ended it.
How it started
An American businessman, Glenn Spicker, founded the museum in 2001 after buying around a thousand communist-era artefacts and working with a documentary filmmaker to shape them into an exhibition. It opened near Wenceslas Square before later moving to larger premises closer to Náměstí Republiky, where it sits today.
What's inside
The exhibition is built around original propaganda posters, film, documents and statues – including a Lenin figure – alongside recreated interiors meant to put daily life on display rather than just objects behind glass: a school classroom, a grocer's shop, a workshop, and an interrogation room recreating the era's secret police methods. It's not the same museum as Warsaw's Museum of Life Under Communism – that one covers communist Poland specifically, while this covers Czechoslovakia's own, related but distinct history.
Booking
An entrance ticket is inexpensive and quick to fit into a day of central Prague sightseeing – most visits run 45 minutes to an hour, easy to combine with a walk around the Old Town or Wenceslas Square.
Good to know
Frequently asked questions
Czechoslovakia's communist era from the February 1948 putsch through to the 1989 Velvet Revolution – propaganda, secret police methods, and the texture of everyday life under the regime, told through original artefacts rather than text panels alone.
Image: Ferran Cornellà via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)