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Lovers of aircraft and military vehicles cannot miss this aviation museum!

The Kbely Aviation Museum (link with https://en.mapy.cz/s/marabadeve) is part of the larger Prague Military Historical Institute, which includes also other military museums.

The aviation museum was founded in 1968 on the grounds of the historic Praha-Kbely military airport, which was the first air base built after the founding of Czechoslovakia in 1918.
Today it represents one of the largest aviation museums in Europe, both for the number and for the quality of the pieces on display.
The exhibition features 275 aircraft: almost a hundred is exhibited inside covered hangars, 25 are outside and 155 are stored in warehouses. Many aircraft are unique in the world.
You would need half day to explore everything in detail and fully appreciate it.

The museum traces the history of Czechoslovak and Czech aviation, showcasting models from all over the world.
Remarkable is the Soyuz 28 capsule, on which Vladimír Remek traveled in 1978. He was the first non-Russian and non-US cosmonaut, he was Czech.

Note: A sculpture and a mosaic were dedicated to Remek and his traveling companion Gubarev at the Háje metro station on the red line (once called “Kosmonautů”, or of the Cosmonauts).

The first hangar (point n. 8 on the map) is dedicated to Colonel Jaroslav Janečka, the founder of the Kbely Aviation Museum.
Here you will find models of the Czechoslovak Air Force between the years 1918 and 1924 and the first Czechoslovak military aircraft, the “Letov Š-2”.

The second hangar (point n. 2 on the map) gets the name from the co-founder of the museum, Jan Sýkora, and displays the original aircraft of the Czechoslovak Air Force from the years 1925–1938.
You will see the most well-known Czechoslovak fighter of the era, the “Avia B-534”, the first commercial aircraft designed and built in Czechoslovakia, the “Aero A.10”, and the racer “Aero A.18C”, which won the President of the Republic Trophy race achieving an average speed of 263.427 km/h.

The third hangar (point n. 9 on the map) is dedicated to the aviation of World War II and is named after General Karel Janoušek, who served as Inspector General of the Czechoslovak Air Force in Great Britain between 1940 and 1945.
On exhibit are the Soviet fighters “Ilyushin Il-2M3” and “Lavochkin La-7”, the French training aircraft “Morane-Saulnier MS.230”, the British training aircraft “De Havilland DH.82 Tiger Moth”, the German jet aircraft “Messerschmitt Me 262B” and guided anti-ship glide bomb “Fritz X”, and the “North American Harvard Mk.II”.

The fourth hangar (point n. 5 on the map) presents the 1st generation of jet aircraft, which were created during and after the Second World War.
The models on display are: the “Avia S-92”, a variant of the Messerschmitt Me 262 assembled in Czechoslovakia, the British fighters “Gloster Meteor” and “De Havilland Vampire”, the Soviet fighter “Yakovlev Yak-17”, and the American subsonic jet trainer “Lockheed T-33”.

The fifth hangar (point n. 10 on the map) hosts the Polish jet trainer “PZL TS-11 Iskra”, and the Czechoslovak jet trainer “Aero L-29 Delfín” (Dolphin), which was used for training by all the Warsaw Pact countries except for Poland (which preferred its own Iskra aircraft).
In this hangar, which is over 50 meters long, there are also a training version of the “MiG-15 UTI”, and the legendary high-performance jet trainer “Aero L-39 Albatros” in a special camouflage coloring to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the first takeoff.

The sixth hangar (point n. 3 on the map) shows the Czechoslovak Air Force after 1945 and hosts almost 60 aircraft, plus a collection of items documenting the development of the Czechoslovak military, transport and sports aviation.
Here is standing a series of MiGs: “MiG-15”, “MiG-17”, “MiG-19”, “MiG-21” and “MiG-23”. Moreover, the “Yakovlev Yak-23”, some Czechoslovak helicopters, and the only amphibian aircraft of the of the Czechoslovak Air Force, the “Saunders Saro Cloud”.

The exhibition does not end here!
In the outdoor area you will encounter the biggest item of the museum, the Tupolev Tu-104, and other aircraft exposed for comparison with the equipment used by the Czechoslovak Air Force.

In addition to the main museum itself on Mladoboleslavská street, you can also visit an exhibition located in the hangars of Stará Aerovka (link with https://en.mapy.cz/s/laneraruna), which is in fact the old airport.
Here, the history of the “Aero” company is displayed, featuring four aircraft, along with bombers, fighter aircraft and fighter-bombers from the period from World War II to the 1980s.

The access to the museum is completely free.
The museum is open every day from 10:00 to 18:00, except Mondays, from May to the end of October.

How to get there

As well as by car or by bike, you can also easily visit the museum by public transport from Prague:

  • By metro C (red line) to Letňany + one of the following buses: 185, 259, 280, 302, 375, 376. If you enjoy walking, it will take you around 30 minutes (with link https://mapy.com/s/cucocaceha) to reach the museum from the metro station.
  • By metro B (yellow line) to Českomoravská or Vysočanská + bus 375.

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