Prague Communism & Cold War Tour: Museum of Communism and Nuclear Bunker

Prague is famous for fairy-tale spires, but for more than forty years it was a city behind the Iron Curtain. This Prague communism tour shows that other Prague. Your licensed guide meets you at the Powder Tower, tells the story of communist Czechoslovakia as you walk, and guides you through the Museum of Communism. The tour finishes in a real Cold War nuclear bunker deep beneath the city centre. The whole tour takes 2.5 hours and includes the bunker tour.

Communist Prague and the Cold War, told through real stories

Between 1948 and 1989 Czechoslovakia lived with censorship, shortages and a secret police. Little of this is visible on today's streets, but your guide knows where it happened and tells it through the people who lived it.

Tour route: Museum of Communism, Wenceslas Square and a nuclear bunker

Republic Square and the Powder Tower. Your guide meets you opposite the Powder Tower and takes you through Czechoslovak history after the Second World War. In February 1948 Czechoslovakia, until then the last democracy in Eastern Europe, became a communist country.

Museum of Communism, with your guide inside. The museum stands in a former customs house practically on Republic Square. Its exhibition covers school, the army, the police, propaganda, censorship, the Stalin monument on Letná and everyday life. Our guide walks through the museum with you, explains the displays and tells the stories behind them. The exhibition ends with photographs and a short documentary film about communist Czechoslovakia and its fall in 1989.

Na Příkopě and Wenceslas Square. From the museum we walk to Wenceslas Square, the focal point of rallies and protests against the regime. Your guide shows the places linked to 1968, when Warsaw Pact tanks crushed the Prague Spring, and to the Velvet Revolution of 1989, including the balcony from which Václav Havel addressed the protesters.

The nuclear bunker. A genuine nuclear shelter built in the 1950s, during the Cold War, to hold 150 people. It opened to the public in 2013 and is now a museum. The last part of the tour takes place here.

Why choose this communism tour

• Your own guide inside the museum, not just at the door. Most visitors walk through the Museum of Communism alone with a lot of text to read. Here your guide leads you through it and tells you what the panels leave out.
• We organise the bunker for you. The bunker can only be visited by advance booking, at a time agreed with the museum, so we reserve your session and plan your start time around it. Places are limited, so it is worth booking early.
• A guide exclusively for you. With our guide, pace, questions and stops are set around your group, not a crowd following an umbrella. In the bunker the museum's own guide leads the tour.
• A good choice in any weather. The museum and the bunker are both indoors.
• Licensed top-category guide (Degree II licence). Real history, not just dates.

Who it's for

History lovers, teenagers and their parents, couples, friends, colleagues and business travellers who want to understand Prague beyond the castle and the bridges. The bunker is not suitable for small children or for wheelchair users: it is underground, with stairs, small rooms and narrow passages, and it is cool.

How the bunker visit works

The bunker can only be visited by advance booking, at a time agreed with the museum, so we help you book your session and plan your start time around it. Your guide takes you to the bunker, hands you over at the entrance to the museum's own guide, and the museum's guide leads the last hour of the tour inside. Bunker and museum tickets are paid separately.

Choose a date and the number of people in the calendar to see the price of a tour for your group. Want more of Prague's hidden side afterwards? Try our private Hidden Prague tour: underground, alchemy and secrets.