Kafka Museum, Literary museum in Lesser Town, Prague, Czech Republic
The Kafka Museum is a literary museum in the Malá Strana district of Prague, housed in a former brickworks building on the bank of the Vltava River. It displays original manuscripts, letters, photographs, and personal documents related to the writer Franz Kafka and his work.
The collection first opened in Barcelona in 1999, then traveled to New York before settling permanently in Prague in 2005. The choice of Prague was natural, as Kafka was born there and spent most of his life in the city.
The exhibition traces how the streets, buildings, and daily life of Prague shaped what Kafka wrote, through letters, notebooks, and photographs you can look at closely. Visitors often leave with a clearer sense of why his stories feel so tied to a specific place and time.
The museum sits on the riverbank in Malá Strana and is easy to reach on foot from the Old Town or from Charles Bridge. It opens every day, so no special planning is needed to fit it into a visit to central Prague.
In the museum's courtyard stands a sculpture by David Cerny showing two figures urinating into a pool shaped like the Czech Republic, their hips moving to trace out letters in the water. The piece is often a surprise for visitors who arrive expecting only books and documents inside.
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