How theater owner Milan Hein lives with his boyfriend: They have arranged an apartment in Nové Svět in Prague

When he once came to Prague occasionally, he wandered around Malá Strana and hoped to live in the metropolis one day. This dream came true for him – he and his partner Martin Šimek live in Prague’s Nové Svět, not far from Hradčany, in a house that has been standing here since the seventeenth century.

Czech theater publicist, actor, presenter and theater entrepreneur Milan Hein, who is also known as the owner of Prague’s Ungelt Theater, decided years ago with his partner to live in Prague’s Nové Svět in the house U Zlatého hroznú, just a short distance from the summer scene of his theater. The house from 1694 is a listed monument.

It used to be a slum

Once upon a time, servants and the poor lived in the New World, life was relatively poor here, which was also true during the time of the First Republic. It wasn’t until after the war that things started to change – although living here was still not luxurious, the apartments were damp, the ceilings were sagging, but even so the place began to attract the interest of artists. Alternative writers, painters and filmmakers often lived here side by side, who hid a little from the regime.

And today? It’s already quite a sought-after address, although you have to accept that it’s a location where you’re more likely to come across tourists than, say, local services.

By the way, the partners were thinking about getting married, they wanted to get married abroad, where possible – for example, in Luxembourg. But when they found out that even then their marriage would not be valid in the Czech Republic, they decided on a registered partnership allowed here.

Martin Šimek is thirty years younger than Milan Hein and is the father of two daughters, whose mother he is still friends with today. He saw Milan Hein for the first time during his appearance on the TV show 13. Komnata. “I was thinking about writing to him, and then my wife came home and said, ‘Look, I think you should write to Milan. So I wrote to him,” recalls Martin Šimek. They texted for a while, eventually leading to a relationship.

Martin Šimek has children with his ex-wife in alternating care, so he spends half of his time with his father and his partner. They have been together for thirteen years, the girls are twenty-one and seventeen today.