Children's Drawings Museum opens in historical centre of Prague

All visitors to Prague flock to the Old Town Square for a chance to see the famous astrological clock doing its thing. Well, if you're about to visit the Czech capital, and you're bringing the kids with you, check out the Old Town Square, but make sure you visit the Museum of Children's Drawings in the Dùm U Zelene zaby or House of the Green Frog, which opened last week. Alena Skodova has the details.

As I approached the museum I saw crowds of children of all ages, accompanied by their mothers and holding in their hands their own drawings. The crowd was streaming up a steep staircase to the newly opened museum on the first floor of the House of the Green Frog. It comprises of four or five large halls, full of children's drawings and colour paintings. And more are to come, as children were handing their works over to a woman standing at the entrance.

But there was more to see: young girls in 19th century white dresses made of paper were holding baskets with baked products and sweets, but also elderly ladies, real masters of their craft, who were making small green frogs from pieces of wire and green beads.

The atmosphere was a happy one, as confirmed by two schoolgirls I spoke to.

They told me they had painted their pictures just a few hours ago and were waiting to see them being hung up. And what also appealed to them were pastry frogs.

It was quite difficult to find amongst the crowds Mrs Darina Martincova, whose brainchild the museum was. The idea of renovating the first floor of this Baroque house and establishing a museum of children's drawings came into existence three years ago. Mrs. Martincova told me that it's mainly adults who will have to help the museum survive:

"If we manage to attract enough people who can work with children, who are good at creative art and who are also good communicators, our museum might be lucky to find enough money to fund its activities."

The paintings shown on the first day came in from kids all over the country, and also included pictures from a Czech school in Daruvar in Croatia as well as from handicapped children. Mrs Martincova said there were no barriers that would disqualify any single child.

"The Green Frog house will host theatre troupes, and there will also be lots of singing here as well as meetings with children of all age groups. And we'll also be accepting paintings by the elderly in the exhibition...because all of us were children once, and many of us still have something of the child inside us. So I welcome pictures by the young and the old alike - from 3 to 99 years of age..."

The Museum of Children's Drawings is open every day from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.