The Crown of the Mother of Cities: The Completion of St. Vitus´Cathedral in Photographs

The Crown of the Mother of Cities exhibition will show the efforts taken by the Association for the Completion of St Vitus Cathedral to fulfil Charles IV’s legacy and to build on his idea of constructing the country’s main sanctuary.

Using reproductions of historical photographs from when this association existed (approx. 1859-1949) visitors can follow the completion of the cathedral and also see how the building process was documented using photographic and other techniques. Therefore there will not only be photographs on display but also other kinds of exhibits: historical plans and drawings, artistic designs, graphics, three-dimensional models and castings, which will complement the main set of photographs taken by famous photographers of their time such as Anselm Schmitz, František Fridrich, Jindřich Eckert, Jindřich Lachmann, Karel Ferdinand Bellmann, Jan Štenc and Josef Sudek.

The Kingless Crown: The Story of the Bohemian Crown Jewels after 1918

The upcoming exhibition entitled The Kingless Crown aims to be the first attempt of its kind to interpret the relationship of the Czechoslovak and Czech state and its society towards the crown jewels after the demise of the monarchy.

The authors of the exhibition have managed to assemble from archives and other sources unique photographs and some previously unpublished documents relating to events that are not particularly well-known. Through them the exhibition will tell, amongst other things, the story of the secret transfer of the jewels to Slovakia when the country was in imminent danger in September 1938 or how copies of the jewels were exhibited at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York where thanks to them, at a time when Czechoslovakia no longer “existed”, the pavilion became the main symbol of the emerging second foreign resistance movement.

In the final years of the German occupation the crown jewels were hidden in the Romanesque cellars of the Old Royal Palace and it is in these unique historical premises that the exhibition will be on display.