Five exhibitions and two displays will be offered to interested visitors by the technical museum

Prague - Five new and reinstated exhibitions that first interested visitors can view from Wednesday, as well as two exhibitions, await visitors at the National Technical Museum in Prague's Letná (NTM). The Technical Museum in Brno and the Military Historical Institute in Prague will also present their collections here. The latter will show forty types of weapons and vehicles used by Czech soldiers over the past 110 years.
    "For the first time in its more than seventy-year history, our building is entirely dedicated to museum purposes. On more than 5,500 square meters, we are exhibiting around 5,000 exhibits," said Karel Ksandr, the general director of NTM, at a press conference before today's opening. He pointed out that today marks the 180th anniversary of the birth of patron, architect, and builder Josef Hlávka, who was the first president of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts.
    According to Ksandr, the museum was closed for 1,621 days due to demanding construction renovations. "It now returns as an independent museum, scientific, and educational institution," he stated and thanked the Ministry of Culture for its support. The current works, the third phase of which will finish in the spring of 2012, cost 370 million crowns. Additionally, 130 million is needed for the exhibitions.
    An attractive part of NTM is the transport hall, documenting the story of cars, motorcycles, airplanes, railways, and ships from the end of the 18th century to the present. Featured is a horse-drawn fire engine from 1795, which extinguished (and did not extinguish) the fire at the National Theatre, a Benz Viktoria vehicle from 1893, the NW Präsident as the first car made in our territory in 1898, the oldest preserved Audi car from 1911, the oldest operating motorcycle Hildebrand-Wolfmüller from 1894, the Kladno locomotive from 1855, and a railway car from 1891, which is the only preserved car from Emperor Franz Joseph's salon train.
    Other exhibitions include a Photographic Studio, Printing, Astronomy, and Architecture, building and design, which was created according to a design by David Vávra. The period atmosphere is enhanced by the Art Nouveau and cubistically arranged space and the opportunity to enter the offices of 19th and 20th-century architects.
    "The reconstruction of the main building will continue next year. We are looking to complete the third modern depository in Čelákovice and then open the Center for Architectural Heritage in Plasy. In 2016, a railway museum should be opened in the former locomotive depot at Masaryk Station in Prague," director Ksandr outlined further plans.
    According to him, a highlight is the current short-term exhibition of the only two Czech Nobel Prizes - awarded to academician Jaroslav Heyrovský for polarography in 1959 and poet Jaroslav Seifert in 1984, loaned by the archive of the Academy of Sciences and the family.
    According to Deputy for Operations and Investments Miloš Josefovič, the third phase of the reconstruction of the main building will include spaces for the library, restoration workshops, and the outer shell.
    "As of today, we have opened about half of all exhibition spaces and two-thirds of planned exhibitions. We are simultaneously finishing the others. Already next year, among them should be a basement coal and ore mine and an interesting display of household technology," said Ksandr to ČTK. The completed exhibitions, according to him, do not lack interactive features. For example, in the transport hall, children can touch an industrial locomotive and have their photo taken on a castle guard motorcycle.