Historical Mint Exhibition

The basement floor of the Renaissance palace at the fourth courtyard houses the historical mint.

The minting reform of King Wenceslas II of 1300 put new coins into circulation – Prague groschen. Mintage was allowed due to the rich deposits of silver found in Kutná Hora, where the only central mint in the country started operations. The need of small coins was covered by parvus coins, to which units on square standard-weight cuts – coins (peníze) and hellers (haléře) – were added in 1384. These were replaced in the 1450s by circular coins with a lion and hellers with a crown. Circular coins were also minted at the time by the Moravian cities of Brno, Znojmo, and Jihlava.

More about coins

The Prague groschen, minted according to a French model, retained its iconography throughout its validity (until 1547) – the Bohemian royal crown with the name and title of the monarch on the obverse, and the Bohemian lion with the words GROSSI PRAGENSES on the reverse. With the exception of the kreutzer currency in 1561–1573, the European monetary and coinage system survived until the 19th century.