Golden Lane

The houses on Golden Lane look like they were designed for elves. These tiny, brightly painted cottages — barely two meters wide in places — are wedged into the arches of Prague Castle's northern fortification wall, and they've been here since the late 16th century. Emperor Rudolf II had them built to house the 24 castle guards who patrolled the ramparts. Space was so tight that the houses were essentially one-room shacks squeezed between stone walls.

The street gets its name from the goldsmiths who lived here in the 17th century, though the far more exciting myth is that Rudolf II's court alchemists worked in these cramped quarters, trying to turn base metals into gold. Exhibitions inside the houses play up this legend, and you'll find an alchemist's workshop recreated in the nearby White Tower. In truth, the alchemists never actually lived on Golden Lane — they had better quarters elsewhere in the castle — but the story has stuck for four centuries because it's too good to let go.

The lane's most famous resident was Franz Kafka, who stayed at his sister Ottla's house at No. 22 from 1916 to 1917. The tiny blue cottage gave him the quiet he craved, and he allegedly used the time to write "The Castle" — a novel about a man trying to gain access to an impenetrable castle bureaucracy. The irony of writing that particular book inside Prague Castle was presumably not lost on him.

Over the centuries, Golden Lane has housed guards, goldsmiths, dressmakers, fortune tellers, and a legendary filmmaker. Today it's a museum street with exhibitions in nine of the sixteen houses, documenting five centuries of life in miniature.