By Linda Tancs

Born in Prague, Franz Kafka was a novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. It’s fair to say that the Czech city shaped his writing life even though he often did not explicitly identify those locales in his works. For example, St. Vitus Cathedral is generally understood to be the church featured in The Trial, and the path taken by Joseph K. in the last chapter of that book goes from the Old Town, across Charles Bridge to the outer limits of the Lesser Town. Literary sleuths also maintain that the view from Bendemann’s window in The Judgment is that seen from Mikulášská Street (today’s Pařížská Street), where Kafka’s family lived in 1912. These and other details of the writer’s life are illuminated at the Franz Kafka Museum. Located just minutes from Charles Bridge, the facility features a number of first-edition Kafka books as well as original letters, diaries and drawings.

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