Open on Na Příkopě since 2001, next door to a casino and above a McDonald’s, Prague’s Museum of Communism got a lot of mentions throughout the years for its seemingly ironic location.
The museum has now relocated to v Celnice, expanding its permanent exhibit of relics from the era of the apparatchik into a brightly-lit 1,500 m2 space.
Opening on August 21 to coincide with the forty-ninth anniversary of the Russian invasion, the new museum offers visitors an even more vivid look into daily Czechoslovak life from the coup of February 1948, to the Velvet Revolution of November 1989.
Sixty-plus text panels, archival photographs, and dozens of exhibits explore the days of the ČSSR through sport, education, art, propaganda, secret services, and censorship.
Temporary exhibition space, a screening room, and a room for school visits are all part of the new facility while the permanent exhibit continues to evoke a mix of nostalgia and menacing, recreating shops and living spaces as well as a faithful replica of the gallows where unspeakable cruelties took place.
Also on view, works of social realist art, depicting the sunny Soviet future and original texts and photos from the archives of ČTK, the Security Services Archive, and the archives of leading Czech photographers.
“After sixteen years in the Savarin Palace we wanted to modernize but still pay respect to the history,” museum co-founder Glenn Spicker, told us, adding: “It’s a fantastic exhibit, improved texts and visuals, just bigger, better, stronger all around.”