The National Museum in Prague opened a new permanent exhibition dedicated to prehistory on Nov. 24. Windows to prehistory display about two thousand artifacts, mainly in the field of paleontology, but also mineralogy.
The exhibition is arranged chronologically. In the Proterozoic section, visitors will find a lot of trilobites and fossilized plants.
Among the fossils is also cooksonia — a fossil of the oldest designated terrestrial vascular plant in the world, which the museum has had in its collections for more than a hundred years. It comes from the collections of Joachim Barrand and the specimen lived on Earth about 432 million years ago. It measures about six centimeters.
This is followed by a walk through history to the Quaternary in the Czech lands, which will enliven the models of prehistoric animals, tell the story of the saber-toothed tiger, mammoth and cub. It will also introduce the only Czech dinosaur, Burianosaur.
Showcases in black frames are part of a design that architect Renata Slámková helped create for the National Museum. The black moving rollers above the showcases will represent the terrain of the Czech landscape through lights and shadows.
The luminous fibers play the ceiling of the exhibition hall to remind visitors that there was a prehistoric sea in these places millions of years ago.
“This year, the National Museum is implementing the most extensive construction of permanent exhibitions not only in its history but also in the history of our country. For the first time in history, we are opening complete expositions of living and inanimate nature and expositions dedicated to history from the Middle Ages to the present for our visitors,” said Michal Lukeš, General Director of the National Museum.
“After the History of the 20th Century, the Miracles of Evolution and the Windows Open to Prehistory — which are open today — we will open another permanent exhibition called History in less than a month. In less than half a year, the National Museum offers almost 8,000 m2 of new visitor space. Thanks to this, the museum also welcomes around 50,000 visitors every month,” he added.
Current government regulations regarding Covid-19 do not change the rules for admission to the National Museum. Thus, individuals can continue to visit exhibitions and exhibitions without checking vaccinations, illnesses, and Covid-19 tests.
However, visitors comply with the following guidelines outlined on the museum website: “every visitor is obliged to wear a respirator according to the relevant standards (FFP2, KN 95) or a nano-veil in all areas of the museum. Visitors must keep a distance of 1.5 meters unless they are persons from the same household or pupils or students of one school. We also ask for the use of disinfection when entering the museum.”
