On the Old Town Square

The Old Town Square forms the historic centre of the Prague Old Town as well as the focal point of city life. Kafka’s life is inextricably linked with the square: his place of birth, his school, his university, his parents’ apartment in the Oppelt House, and the house in which he lived as a boy are all there. In his younger years, he would meet his friend Max Brod at the foot of the Statue of Mary, which dominated the square until 1918, and when he looked over to the Kinsky Palace he could see the customers entering his father’s shop. “This little circle,” he is said once to have aptly remarked, “contains my whole life.” 

“My grammar school was here, there in the building opposite, the university, and, a little further on the left, my office. This little circle” – and he drew a few little circles with his finger – “contains my whole life.”

Franz Kafka (after Friedl Thieberger)