The National Museum in Prague was founded on April 15, 1818. It was founded by the first president of the Society of the Patriotic Museum, Count Sternberk, who served as the trustee and operator of the museum. Early on, the focus of the museum was natural sciences, partially because Count Sternberk was a botanist, mineralogist, and eminent phytopaleontologist, but also because of the natural science slant of the times, as perpetrated by Emperor Joseph II of Austria.
The museum was originally located in the Sternberg Palace, however the venue became too small to hold the museum's collections. The museum relocated to the Nostitz Palace, but this was also found to be of insufficient capacity, which led to the decision to construct a new building for the museum in Wenceslas Square.
The museum did not acquire historical objects until the 1830s and 40s, when Romanticism arose. The institution of the museum was increasingly seen as a center for Czech nationalism. Serving as historian and secretary of the National Museum in 1841, František Palacký tried to balance natural science and history, as he described in his Treatise of 1841[2]. However, it wasn't until nearly a century later that the National Museum’s historical treasures equaled its collection of natural science artifacts.
The museum brought about an intellectual shift in Prague. The Bohemian nobility had, until this time, been prominent, both politically and fiscally, in scholarly and scientific groups. However, the National Museum was created to serve all the inhabitants of the land, lifting the stranglehold the nobility had had on knowledge. This was further accelerated by the historian František Palacký, who in 1827 suggested that the museum publish separate journals in German and Czech[3]. Previously, the vast majority of scholarly journals were written in German, but within a few years the German journal had ceased publication, while the Czech journal continued for more than a century.
In 1949, the national government took over the museum, and detailed the museum's role and leadership in the Museum and Galleries Act of 1959. In May 1964, the Museum was turned into an organization of five professionally autonomous components: the Museum of Natural Science, the Historical Museum, the Naprstek Museum of Asia, African, and American Cultures, the National Museum Library, the Central Office of Museology. A sixth autonomous unit, the Museum of Czech Music, was established in 1976.
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