Map - National Museum (Prague) (Národní muzeum)

The National Museum (NM) (Czech: Národní muzeum) is a Czech museum institution intended to systematically establish, prepare, and publicly exhibit natural scientific and historical collections. It was founded in 1818 by Kašpar Maria Šternberg. Historian František Palacký was also strongly involved in the foundation of the museum.

The National Museum houses nearly 14 million items from the areas of natural history, history, arts, music and librarianship, which are located in dozens of museum buildings. The main building of the National Museum has been renovated in 2011–2019, and permanent exhibitions are gradually being opened from Spring 2020.

Even before the French Revolution some royal and private collections of art, science and culture were made available to the public but in the XIX century all big cities need at least a museum. The beginnings of the museum can be seen as far back as 1796 when the private Society of Patriotic Friends of the Arts was founded by Count Casper Sternberk-Manderschied and a group of other prominent nobles. The avowed purpose of the society was "the renewed promotion of art and taste". In 1800, the group founded the Academy of Fine Arts, which trained students in progressive forms of art and history.