Location: Mozartova 169, Betramka
Tel. 257 317 465
Subway:
Andel
Trolley: 4, 7, 9, 10
Open: Apr- Oct 9:30am- 6pm daily
Nov- Mar: 9:30am- 4pm daily
www.betramka.com
Bertramka Mozart Museum is a former house of Mr and Mrs Dušek that often hosted Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in his frequent trips to Prague. Bertramka Mozart Museum was not never owned by the great composer. In fact it belonged to another composer Frantisek Dusek. However famous Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart did stay here as a guest with his wife Constanze in 1787. It was here in Bertramka Mozart Museum that he finished his Don Giovanni. Soma also claim that Mozart finished his overture to the opera "The Marriage of Figaro" is just one night while staying here. He later performed it for the first time in Nostitz Theatre known today as Estates Theatre in Prague.
Mozart returned to estate during his last visit to the Czech capital in 1791. Here he finished his opera "La Clemenza di Tido". In 1838 Bertramka Mozart Museum was acquire by Lambert Popelka. His son places a bust of Mozart in the garden to honor famous guest. He also preserved several rooms in the villa as a first museum of the great composer as they were without alterations. The last owner of Bertramka villa left it to Salzburg Foundation "Mozarteum". In 1929 estate was bought by the "Mozart Society", which owned the building until 1986 when it was nationalized by the Czech government. The same year Bertramka Mozart Museum was officially established. It held a collection of artifacts devoted to Mozart himself as well as his famous hosts Dusek family. Among its notable collections artifacts is a piano that Mozart played as well a bunch of hair of a famous composer.
Until the 17th century, the slope was planted with vineyards, which
included wooden vineyard houses. In 1699, the brewer Jan František
Pimskorn bought and joined the vineyards, built a homestead with a
residential house, a wine press, and a barn from quarried marl and had
the land fenced. In 1710 he sold the property to Jan Jiří Jelinka. In
1723, the estate was owned by Vojtěch Jiří Fillippi, from whom she
bought it at an auction in 1743 from Zornfels. The homestead was named
after her and her husband František from Bertram. Later, they had the
homestead converted into a resort modeled after suburban villas. From
1764, other owners took turns here. In 1784, the opera singer Josefína
Dušková bought the estate with her husband, composer and musician
František Xaver Dušek. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart visited them in 1787 and
1791. Mozart never mentioned his stay at Bertramka in his extant
letters. On his first visit to Prague (in January and February 1787),
Mozart only noted that he was staying in the palace of Johann Joseph
Franz von Thun-Hohenstein in Malá Strana. For his next visits (October
to November 1787 and August to September 1791), it is difficult to
imagine that it would be practical to stay at Bertramka, which was
beyond the city walls, for a long time. Only occasional visits by Mozart
to Bertramka are probable. In 1873, there was an unstylish
reconstruction of the buildings and the demolition of the lusthaus,
which stood in the garden.
In 1925, Bertramka was inherited by
the International Mozarteum Foundation from the last owner, M.
Slizenská. Two years later, the association Mozartova obec was founded,
which bought the building in January 1929.
After 1989, Bertramka
was owned by the Prague 5 district, which leased the building to
Comenius, headed by lawyer Karel Muzikář senior. Furniture and exhibits
with a musical theme were borrowed from the Czech Museum of Music, the
National Gallery and the Museum of Applied Arts. Among the exhibits was
a lock of Mozart's hair. The building was made accessible and concerts
and fashion shows were held in it or in the garden. On December 2, 2009,
the Mozartova obec association took over the keys from Bertramka, which
had been fighting over ownership for 18 years. In May 2010, two
exhibitions "Mozart's Garden and its Fates" and "Johann Adolf Hasse -
Leben und Werk" were installed in the villa, and the building was open
to the public daily. In 2012, another exhibition "Birth of Estates
Theatre" was installed in the villa. Archived 09/09/2019 at the Wayback
Machine. From November 2016 to June 2019, the so-called staircase of the
villa was being repaired, and Bertramka was only open to pre-announced
groups, for whom expert lectures on Mozart and Prague were held.
Archived 6/26/2019 at the Wayback Machine. Every year since 2010, a
concert of the winners of the Duška musical youth singing competition,
organized by the Mozart community in the Czech Republic, has been held
at Bertramka.
On January 28, 2019, the Government of the Czech
Republic approved the "Draft Government Regulation on the declaration of
the Bertramka Manor in Prague as a national cultural monument".
The staircase repair was completed in June 2019 and the villa was opened
to the public. The fourth exhibition "Bertramka - a German view (1942)"
was installed in the exhibition, which was organized by the Institute of
Art History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in
cooperation with the Mozart community in the Czech Republic and with the
support of the Technical University of Munich, under the auspices of the
Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany J.E. Dr. Christoph Israng.
The exhibition presents almost 100 facsimiles of previously unknown
drawings, plans and sketches by Bertramka from 1925 and 1942‒1943, found
in the Museum of Architecture of the Technical University of Munich.
They were taken by Professor Georg Buchner (1890‒1971) together with his
advanced students at the Akademie für Angewandte Kunst in Munich. The
exhibition also includes Buchner's unique drawings and sketches of some
Prague motifs, as well as a number of period photographs. It was curated
by Milada Jonášová and prof. Manfred Hermann Schmid (Universität
Tübingen), who found the Munich materials.
The homestead consists of an area, the main object of which is a residential building with the main facade facing the yard. The main visible elements of this building are the forward double-arm staircase and the loggia. The southern short front of the building opens into the space of the rising garden. Opposite is a barn with a two-story storage room. Right next to the house is the ground floor part of the former wine press with thick masonry. In its place, today there is a Memorial to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the Dušk family with a permanent exhibition. The entire building underwent a significant reconstruction in 1940-1942 on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Mozart's death, then in 1956 on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Mozart's birth. Further repairs took place in 1986 and 1987. The Bertramka estate has been protected as a monument since 1964.
Originally a utility garden and vineyard were replaced by a park at the end of the 18th century. There was, for example, a row of chestnut trees. However, this disappeared during a fire in 1871 and after 1873, when the estate was extensively rebuilt.
In 2009, Bertramka was returned to the Mozartovská community of the Czech Republic. The company Comenius, represented by Mr. Muzikář, handed over the Bertramka without all the internal equipment and thus made it impossible to immediately open the Bertramka to the public. However, since 2009, the Mozart community of the Czech Republic has not been able to create a dignified and valuable permanent exhibition and ensure a full week of operation. Thanks to the long-term poor management of the building, Bertramka is in an almost state of disrepair and closed to the public in 2021. For several years, the building has not been heated and the staircase, despite the efforts of Mozart's village, has not been properly repaired to withstand the weather. Homeless people are appearing more and more often on the property. The garden is neglected and the place is in an increasingly impoverished condition year by year.