Prague's museums are built for hands as much as eyes. Kids can take the controls of a train simulator, climb aboard props from classic Czech trick films or stand under a fin whale skeleton, and most of these spots keep a family busy on a cold or rainy afternoon. Here's what we checked, from LEGO models of Charles Bridge to the fighter jets at Kbely.
One of the country's largest museum buildings, with 16 permanent exhibitions over seven floors. The transportation hall is the headline: early cars, motorcycles, locomotives and dozens of aircraft hung from the ceiling, including a 1945 Spitfire.
A guided tour leads through 490 meters of model ore and coal mine, with original lamps and mining sounds. There is also a Merkur construction-set playroom, a TV studio, astronomy and chemistry.
The Historical Building at the top of Wenceslas Square holds the natural history halls: a fin whale skeleton, life-size models of prehistoric animals, fluorescent minerals and meteorites, and the domed Pantheon.
An underground passage leads to the New Building and its hands-on Children's Museum, where kids explore nature and invention through interactive exhibits and games. Older kids can add the 20th-century history galleries.
A private LEGO museum with about 3,000 models built from more than a million bricks, spread over 20 themed displays. Kids can spot LEGO versions of Charles Bridge, the Astronomical Clock and the National Theatre, plus Star Wars, Harry Potter, knights and trains, and learn that the first LEGO toys were wooden.
A building corner lets them make their own, and the shop stocks hard-to-find sets and minifigures.
The Public Transport Museum fills the Střešovice tram depot, built in 1909 and now a protected technical monument, with more than 40 historic vehicles: horse-drawn and electric trams, buses and trolleybuses. Kids can walk right up to the cars.
Around them are scale models of vehicles that no longer survive, old tickets, route maps and photos, and archive film of the city's early transit. A good pick for kids who love trams.
An indoor illusion museum a short walk from Wenceslas Square, with more than 50 hands-on exhibits about how eyes and brains get fooled. Kids grow and shrink in the Ames Room, lie on a bed of 1,209 nails, cast colored shadows in the RGB Room and dance in a mirrored disco room that seems to go on forever. Cameras are welcome in every room, so expect plenty of photos.
The planetarium sits at the edge of Stromovka park, under a 23.5-meter dome that recently became Europe's first LED dome, lit by 45 million diodes. Shows fill the whole dome: trips through the galaxy, the night sky, coral reefs and the Czech countryside, plus fairy-tale programs for the youngest viewers.
Before the show, kids can explore the foyer's exhibition zones and its giant LED wall.
Two basement floors of model railways, over 600 m². The largest layout covers six Czech regions in miniature, with Karlštejn castle, the Karlovy Vary colonnade and the Pilsen main station, and 80 to 90 trains, trams and cable cars running at once. Interactive buttons fell a tree or start a circus show.
The ticket also covers train simulators, VR, RC cars, a slot-car track, LEGO and a play area.
A big museum on farming and food in a historic building in Letná. The basement tractor hall shows more than twenty tractors built between 1917 and 1953, with pedal tractors and a track for small kids and a driving simulator for older ones.
Upstairs are fishing, gamekeeping and food exhibitions, farm-animal specimens led by César the bull, and a rooftop garden with beehives, crop beds and a view across the city.
An interactive museum of Karel Zeman, the Czech filmmaker whose trick effects made Journey to the Beginning of Time and The Fabulous Baron Munchausen famous. The rooms are built as film sets, and kids are invited in: climb onto a flying machine, ride Baron Munchausen's winged horses, or steer the submarine from Invention for Destruction. Each set explains the trick behind the scene, and photos and videos are encouraged.
The Náprstek Museum holds the National Museum's collections from Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania. The long-term Australia and Oceania halls show boomerangs, spears, carved masks, bark paintings and bark-cloth tapas, with interactive elements and large photographs. Other rooms host temporary shows and the story of founder Vojta Náprstek. The Oceania labels are in Czech only, so it suits kids who like looking more than reading.
The main building of the Museum of Prague reopened after a five-year renovation, with new technology inside a 1900 building. Kids get a bird's-eye flight over 19th-century Prague in an immersive hall, life-size "living pictures", and Antonín Langweil's 20 m² paper model of the city, where they can hunt for familiar streets.
An AI portrait of Langweil talks back, and Grifo, the museum's griffin, talks only to kids.
A public astronomy observatory from 1928 on Petřín hill, built against the medieval Hunger Wall. Its three domes hold telescopes, including a historic Zeiss double astrograph in the main dome. On clear days visitors look at the sun and sunspots; after dark, the moon, planets and deep-sky objects. Inside there is a permanent astronomy exhibition, and the Astrobistro café sits on the ground floor.
Letecké muzeum Kbely sits on the Prague-Kbely airfield, the first military air base Czechoslovakia built after 1918. Nearly 100 aircraft fill the covered hangars and 25 more stand outside, from the earliest Czechoslovak planes to Cold War jets, bombers, helicopters and airliners, alongside engines, uniforms and flight gear.
More hangars, at Stará Aerovka, sit about 900 meters away. Best for kids who want to stand under a real fighter jet.
Prague's museums are built for hands as much as eyes. Kids can take the controls of a train simulator, climb aboard props from classic Czech trick films or stand under a fin whale skeleton, and most of these spots keep a family busy on a cold or rainy afternoon. Here's what we checked, from LEGO models of Charles Bridge to the fighter jets at Kbely.
One of the country's largest museum buildings, with 16 permanent exhibitions over seven floors. The transportation hall is the headline: early cars, motorcycles, locomotives and dozens of aircraft hung from the ceiling, including a 1945 Spitfire.
A guided tour leads through 490 meters of model ore and coal mine, with original lamps and mining sounds. There is also a Merkur construction-set playroom, a TV studio, astronomy and chemistry.
The Historical Building at the top of Wenceslas Square holds the natural history halls: a fin whale skeleton, life-size models of prehistoric animals, fluorescent minerals and meteorites, and the domed Pantheon.
An underground passage leads to the New Building and its hands-on Children's Museum, where kids explore nature and invention through interactive exhibits and games. Older kids can add the 20th-century history galleries.
A private LEGO museum with about 3,000 models built from more than a million bricks, spread over 20 themed displays. Kids can spot LEGO versions of Charles Bridge, the Astronomical Clock and the National Theatre, plus Star Wars, Harry Potter, knights and trains, and learn that the first LEGO toys were wooden.
A building corner lets them make their own, and the shop stocks hard-to-find sets and minifigures.
The Public Transport Museum fills the Střešovice tram depot, built in 1909 and now a protected technical monument, with more than 40 historic vehicles: horse-drawn and electric trams, buses and trolleybuses. Kids can walk right up to the cars.
Around them are scale models of vehicles that no longer survive, old tickets, route maps and photos, and archive film of the city's early transit. A good pick for kids who love trams.
An indoor illusion museum a short walk from Wenceslas Square, with more than 50 hands-on exhibits about how eyes and brains get fooled. Kids grow and shrink in the Ames Room, lie on a bed of 1,209 nails, cast colored shadows in the RGB Room and dance in a mirrored disco room that seems to go on forever. Cameras are welcome in every room, so expect plenty of photos.
The planetarium sits at the edge of Stromovka park, under a 23.5-meter dome that recently became Europe's first LED dome, lit by 45 million diodes. Shows fill the whole dome: trips through the galaxy, the night sky, coral reefs and the Czech countryside, plus fairy-tale programs for the youngest viewers.
Before the show, kids can explore the foyer's exhibition zones and its giant LED wall.
Two basement floors of model railways, over 600 m². The largest layout covers six Czech regions in miniature, with Karlštejn castle, the Karlovy Vary colonnade and the Pilsen main station, and 80 to 90 trains, trams and cable cars running at once. Interactive buttons fell a tree or start a circus show.
The ticket also covers train simulators, VR, RC cars, a slot-car track, LEGO and a play area.
A big museum on farming and food in a historic building in Letná. The basement tractor hall shows more than twenty tractors built between 1917 and 1953, with pedal tractors and a track for small kids and a driving simulator for older ones.
Upstairs are fishing, gamekeeping and food exhibitions, farm-animal specimens led by César the bull, and a rooftop garden with beehives, crop beds and a view across the city.
An interactive museum of Karel Zeman, the Czech filmmaker whose trick effects made Journey to the Beginning of Time and The Fabulous Baron Munchausen famous. The rooms are built as film sets, and kids are invited in: climb onto a flying machine, ride Baron Munchausen's winged horses, or steer the submarine from Invention for Destruction. Each set explains the trick behind the scene, and photos and videos are encouraged.
The Náprstek Museum holds the National Museum's collections from Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania. The long-term Australia and Oceania halls show boomerangs, spears, carved masks, bark paintings and bark-cloth tapas, with interactive elements and large photographs. Other rooms host temporary shows and the story of founder Vojta Náprstek. The Oceania labels are in Czech only, so it suits kids who like looking more than reading.
The main building of the Museum of Prague reopened after a five-year renovation, with new technology inside a 1900 building. Kids get a bird's-eye flight over 19th-century Prague in an immersive hall, life-size "living pictures", and Antonín Langweil's 20 m² paper model of the city, where they can hunt for familiar streets.
An AI portrait of Langweil talks back, and Grifo, the museum's griffin, talks only to kids.
A public astronomy observatory from 1928 on Petřín hill, built against the medieval Hunger Wall. Its three domes hold telescopes, including a historic Zeiss double astrograph in the main dome. On clear days visitors look at the sun and sunspots; after dark, the moon, planets and deep-sky objects. Inside there is a permanent astronomy exhibition, and the Astrobistro café sits on the ground floor.
Letecké muzeum Kbely sits on the Prague-Kbely airfield, the first military air base Czechoslovakia built after 1918. Nearly 100 aircraft fill the covered hangars and 25 more stand outside, from the earliest Czechoslovak planes to Cold War jets, bombers, helicopters and airliners, alongside engines, uniforms and flight gear.
More hangars, at Stará Aerovka, sit about 900 meters away. Best for kids who want to stand under a real fighter jet.
