On 2 July 2020, the Prague City Council approved the location of the temporary headquarters and exhibition of the Museum of the Memory of the 20th Century in the House of the Preachers, a Renaissance palace in Prague's Hradčany district.
The House of the Pážat will provide the museum with facilities for the exhibition and other educational activities. The two-storey building also offers space suitable for a library and study room or a smaller lecture hall, and the courtyard may host various cultural events in the future.
The building will now undergo the necessary internal modifications for the museum's activities. We are already working hard on the project. The exhibition could be ready by the summer of 2022, but we plan to open the doors earlier for partial events.
However, the guest house should be a temporary facility for several years. In the future, a more extensive exhibition could be created in the stands of Strahov Stadium, where the Museum of the Memory of the 20th Century and the Institute of the Memory of the Nation would operate side by side. But this ambitious project is only at the beginning.
"In any case, we have a lot of work ahead of us. We are creating a modern institution of memory that recalls the bright and shadowy sides of our modern history. We are not and will not be just a 'museum of totalitarianism', as some have put it in shorthand. We want to offer a comprehensive and critical view of the history of the 20th century. We want to be a true museum of 20th century memory. Thank you for your support," adds Jiří Šesták, the director of the Museum of the Memory of the 20th Century.