Description

Essentials about the Jewish Museum in Prague in brief

Anyone interested in Jewish history and religion should definitely have visited the Jewish Museum in Prague. Located in the former Jewish quarter Josefov, the museum is one of the oldest and continuously existing Jewish museums in the world. Through an extensive collection of religious objects from Jewish communities of Bohemia and Moravia, the museum documents the history, traditions and customs of the Jewish population of the Czech Republic.

The history of the Jewish Museum in Prague

Historically, the museum dates back to the historian Hugo Lieben and the representative of the Czech Jewish community, August Stein. They founded the museum in 1906 with the aim of preserving the objects from Prague synagogues, which were demolished at the beginning of the 20th century in the course of the transformation of the Josefov Jewish quarter.

With the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia in 1939, the museum was closed. A 1942 circular from the Jewish Town Hall in Prague asking Jewish religious communities to send their movable property to the Prague Museum resulted in large quantities of religious objects and documents being sent to Prague. In this way, the museum accumulated about 100,000 synagogal objects.

In 1942, an unexpected historical turn occurred when the Eichmann department under Adolf Eichmann pushed for the establishment of a “museum of a vanished race” on the basis of the confiscated sacred objects from the Jewish communities in Bohemia and Moravia. As part of the museum’s foundation, even the Prague synagogues were restored and incorporated into the museum. The remaining members of Prague’s Jewish community associated the museum with the hope of saving their religious objects from destruction by the Nazis. Little is known about the motives of the Nazis in relation to the museum, as much of the documentation was destroyed by the SS before they left Prague.

The Jewish community, which had shrunk to less than 1,000 members, found a museum still completely intact after the end of the Second World War. Due to the massively decimated number of members of the Prague Jewish community during the Holocaust, a private continuation of the museum was out of the question, which is why it was handed over to the City of Prague in 1950. During the communist period, the support of the museum from the state was very poor and the museum work was ideologically restricted.

Today, however, the Jewish Museum in Prague presents itself as one of the most modern and popular in the city. With the help of electronic media, it not only presents the long history of Jews in Bohemia and Moravia, but also sheds light on current Jewish life in the Czech Republic.

The buildings of the Jewish Museum in Prague

The Museum consists of the following buildings: The Klausen, Maisel, Pinkas and Spanish Synagogues, the Ceremonial Hall, the Old Jewish Cemetery, the Robert Guttmann Gallery in the former Jewish Hospital and the Archive in the Smíchover Synagogue.

The Old Jewish Cemetery

Europe’s most famous Jewish cemetery is located in the heart of the former Jewish quarter Josefov. It is estimated that since the 15th century, more than 100,000 people have found their resting place on the grounds of the Old Jewish Cemetery. There are about 12,000 gravestones on an area of only one hectare. Since the lack of space required a layering of the dead, the cemetery today is a bizarre hilly landscape of crisscrossing gravestones.

The Klausen Synagogue

The Baroque building of the Klausen Synagogue is located right next to the Old Jewish Cemetery. Once the largest synagogue in the Prague ghetto, today guests can visit an exhibition on Jewish traditions here. Visitors get an insight into the meaning of customs at birth, circumcision, marriage, divorce and can learn in detail about Talmud and Torah.

The Maisel Synagogue

In the Maisel Synagogue you can see the history of Bohemian Jews between the 10th and 18th centuries. Since the original Renaissance building of the synagogue was severely damaged in a fire, today the synagogue shines in the neo-Gothic style. Visitors can travel back in time with the help of an audiovisual projection and immerse themselves in the streets of the old Jewish quarter. In the evening, the synagogue is transformed into an art space with poetry, theater and music.

The Pinkas Synagogue

The Pinkas Synagogue is home to the Holocaust Memorial. On the walls of the synagogue are arranged alphabetically the names of almost 80,000 Jews from Bohemia and Moravia who were murdered in the Nazi concentration and extermination camps. Today’s permanent exhibition shows touching children’s drawings made in the Theresienstadt ghetto between 1942 and 1944.

The Spanish Synagogue

The Spanish Synagogue is the youngest of Prague’s synagogues. Built in the 19th century, the building is particularly remarkable for its Moorish style. Artfully designed windows, doors, railings, walls and ceilings are reminiscent of the Moorish buildings of Andalusia. The permanent exhibition includes objects from the Jewish history of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Robert Guttmann Gallery

The 80 square meter exhibition space has been hosting changing art exhibitions since 2001. The gallery is located in the building of the former Jewish hospital, which was built in 1935 next to the Spanish Synagogue. It is named after the Zionist artist and naive painter Robert Guttmann, who lived from 1880 to 1942.

The Ceremonial Hall

The Ceremonial and Mortuary Hall was built at the beginning of the 20th century at the Old Jewish Cemetery in neo-Romanesque style. Until 1920, the building served ritual washing of the dead and Jewish burial ceremonies. Today’s exhibition in the hall is dedicated to topics related to death and explains prayers, burial procedures and tombstone inscriptions.

Website

jewishmuseum.cz

Opening hours

Opening hours Jan. – Mar. and Nov. – Dec.

Admission fees

Adults: CZK 500

Students: CZK 370

Children (Ages 6 – 15): CZK 180

Small children (Ages 5 and under): free

Tickets for the Jewish Museum in Prague include admission to the Maisel Synagogue, the Pinkas Synagogue, the Old Jewish Cemetery, the Klausen Synagogue, the Ceremonial Hall, the Spanish Synagogue and the temporary exhibition in the Robert Guttmann Gallery.

For further ticket variants see the website.

Address

Getting there

By public transport:

Tram lines 17 and 93: Stop Právnická fakulta

Bus line 207: Stop Právnická fakulta

Bus line 194: Stops Pařížská and U Staré školy

By car:

The nearest parking garage is Garáže Pařížská.