Prague Public Transport Museum

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Description

Located in the tram depot in Prague-Střešovice is a unique collection of artifacts from the history of urban mass transit in the capital city of the Czech Republic. The permanent "Public Transport Museum" exhibition was opened in 1993 by the Prague Public Transport Company, a.s. It contains over 40 historical vehicles and many other exhibits – models, photographs, historical documents, tickets and blueprints, all available for viewing by the public.

The museum is open from the 31st March to the 18th November 2012 on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Visits outside of regular opening hours can be arranged as a special order.

Museum admission is CZK 35 for adults and CZK 20 for children.

In Brief

On 14 May 1993, the mayor of Prague, Jan Koukal, presided over the grand opening of the Prague Public Transport Museum, which is located in an historical tram depot building in Prague – Střešovice.

The depot was itself declared a technical historical landmark in 1991. It was built in 1909, and is a typical example of utilitarian transport buildings belonging to the Electrical Utilities of Prague from the era of the beginnings of urban mass transit in Prague. They served their purposes – storage and maintenance of tram vehicles until the year 1992, when their adaptation for museum purposes commenced.

On 21 June 1998, the collection of 50 historical urban mass transit vehicles and 34 other objects in the Museum were proclaimed by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic to be a cultural landmark.

The Střešovice depot is not just a museum, however. One of its halls is also used to dispatch some operational historical tram vehicles – these aren't museum exhibits though. They set out from here on their route on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays during the summer season, for example on sight-seeing Route No. 91, or as specially ordered by various interested parties, both foreign and local.

The History of Public Transport in Prague Exhibit

An integral part of the exhibition is a permanent exhibit on the history of public transport in Prague. It was created by the Historical Archive of the Prague Public Transport Company, a.s. in collaboration with a number of other institutions – the National Archives, the Prague Archives, the Urban Transport Association as well as members of the Urban Transport Club from the Vltavská House of Culture in Prague 7. Museum visitors have the opportunity to see unique photographs, copies of historical documents, drawings, tickets, but also video programmes with unique film materials from the collection of the National Film Archive. The Museum of the City of Prague has given the exhibit a long-term loan of a set of models of other historical public transport vehicles from Prague that no longer exist. The company ČKD Tatra, a.s., has on exhibit a model of the R1 high-speed track vehicle that was under development at the beginning of the 1970s for Prague's metro.