Why go
Kafka was born near Old Town Square and lived within Prague's German-speaking Jewish world. Knowing that setting makes a walk through Josefov more meaningful than hunting for a single building. His spare-time writing beside a legal and insurance career also gives context to the institutions and pressures that recur in his fiction.
The full story
Franz Kafka was born in Prague when it belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His family was Jewish and German-speaking, part of a city where several languages and communities lived close together. He trained as a lawyer and worked for an insurance company while writing in his spare time. Most of his published work was in German. Stories such as The Metamorphosis and the unfinished novel The Trial turn ordinary rooms, offices and rules into unsettling worlds. Few of his works drew much attention during his lifetime. His friend Max Brod later published unfinished manuscripts despite Kafka's request that they be destroyed. In Josefov and around Old Town Square, look for the urban setting of that life, but do not treat a Kafka biography as an invitation to enter a verified birthplace. The literary connection lies in the city's overlapping communities and institutions as much as in any one address.