Prague’s oldest theatre and finest neoclassical building, the Estates Theatre is where the premiere of Mozart’s Don Giovanni was performed on 29 October 1787, with the maestro himself conducting. Opened in 1783 as the Nostitz Theatre (after its founder, Count Anton von Nostitz-Rieneck), it was patronised by upper-class German citizens and thus came to be called the Estates Theatre – the Estates being the traditional nobility.
After WWII it was renamed the Tylovo divadlo (Tyl Theatre) in honour of the 19th-century Czech playwright Josef Kajetán Tyl. One of his claims to fame is that the Czech national anthem, Kde domov můj? (Where is My Home?), came from one of his plays. In the early 1990s the theatre’s name reverted to Estates Theatre. To see the interior you can attend a performance or take a guided tour.
