Bedřich Smetana Museum

This guide to the Bedrich Smetana Museum in Prague tells the story behind the small bone displayed inside, part of the composer's inner ear, and how Smetana wrote the symphonic cycle Ma vlast, including its famous Vltava movement tracing the river outside these windows, after he had already gone completely deaf. It traces his hearing loss from his late forties onward, alongside the building's own past as a nineteenth-century water station decorated with sgraffito by leading Czech painters. Stand by the window overlooking the river as you listen.