The Best Museums in Prague

Sternberk Palace (Hradcanské nám. 15, Prague 1; tel. 233-090-570): The country's best collection of European art, ranging from Byzantine-era icons straight through to Rembrandt, El Greco, Goya, and Van Dyck.

Alfons Mucha Museum (Panská 7, Prague 1; tel. 221-451-333): Posters, decorative panels, objets d'art, and excerpts from sketchbooks, as well as oil paintings from this well-known Art Nouveau master, are displayed at the baroque Kaunický Palace near Václavské námestí.

St. George's Convent (Jirské nám. 33, Prague 1; tel. 257-531-644): I never thought I'd have a weakness for 19th-century landscape paintings, but these are spectacular. While the Czech Republic lacks rugged mountains (not to mention a seashore), it's blessed with some of the most beautiful rolling countryside in Europe, and the painters displayed here knew how to capture that.

Veletrzní Palá (Veletrzní at Dukelských hrdinu 47, Prague 7; tel. 224-301-111): Prague's museum of art of the 20th and 21st centuries is an underrated gem, filled with masterworks by Klimt, Munch, Schiele, and Picasso. But the real treats here are works by the Modernist Czech painters from the 1920s and '30s.

Jewish Museum (U Starého hrbitova; enter from Siroká 3, Prague 1; tel. 221-711-511): This "museum" is not just one building but a series of preserved synagogues and the Old Jewish Cemetery, which together bear witness to 7 centuries of Jewish life in this tiny part of Prague. The admission fee is regrettably high, but the memory of all those jagged tombstones jutting upward in that crowded plot will last a lifetime.

Museum of the Ghetto (Terezín; tel. 416-782-225): This is a sobering space that tells the shocking tale of how the Nazis deceived the world into thinking their "Final Solution" was actually building vacation homes for Jews. How did the Nazis get away with it, and how did the world allow them to?