Exhibition recalling Gottwald cult of personality opens at National Memorial

A new exhibition at the National Memorial on Vítkov Hill opened on Saturday allowing visitors to visit underground chambers where Czechoslovakia’s first communist president Klement Gottwald was embalmed. The historic site was infamously used as a mausoleum for Gottwald’s body after his death. The exhibition, named The Laboratory of Power, includes a machine room and other chambers where original equipment used in the embalming process was stored. Photographs and slogans are included to evoke the atmosphere of the 1950s – one of darkest periods in Czechoslovak history which followed with the Communist takeover in February 1948.