3 Best Sights in Prague, Czech Republic

The great early-20th-century Jewish author Franz Kafka wasn't considered Czech and he wrote in German, but he lived in Prague nearly his entire short, anguished life, so it's fitting that his shrine is here too. Because the museum's designers believed in channeling Kafka's darkly paranoid and paradoxical work, they created exhibits true to this spirit. And even if the results are often goofy, they get an A for effort. Facsimiles of manuscripts, documents, first editions, photographs, and newspaper obits are displayed in glass vitrines, which in turn are situated in "Kafkaesque" settings: huge open filing cabinets, stone gardens, piles of coal. The basement level of the museum gets even freakier, with expressionistic representations of Kafka's work itself, including a model of the horrible torture machine from the "In the Penal Colony" story—not a place for young children, or even lovers on a first date, but fascinating to anyone familiar with Kafka's work. Other Kafka sites in Prague include his home on Zlatá ulička (Golden Lane), his Staré Mĕsto birthplace at Náměstí Franze Kafky 3, and Jaroslav Rona's trippy bronze sculpture of the writer on Dušní street in Staré Mĕsto. (Speaking of sculptures, take a gander at the animatronic Piss statue in the Kafka Museum's courtyard. This rendition of a couple urinating into a fountain shaped like the Czech Republic was made by local enfant terrible sculptor David Černý, who also did the babies crawling up the Žižkovská televizní věž [Žižkov TV Tower].)

For decades it was almost impossible to find an Alfons Mucha original in his homeland, but in 1998 this private museum opened with nearly 100 works from this justly famous Czech artist's long career. Everything you expect to see from the man famed for his art nouveau style is here—the theater posters of actress Sarah Bernhardt, the eye-popping advertising posters, and the sinuous, intricate designs. Also exhibited are paintings, photographs taken in Mucha's studio (one shows Paul Gauguin playing the piano in his underwear), and even Czechoslovak banknotes designed by Mucha.

The stately red-and-yellow baroque villa housing this museum displays the 19th-century Czech composer's scores, photographs, viola, piano, and other memorabilia. The statues in the garden date to about 1735; the house is from 1720. Check the schedule for classical performances, as recitals are often held in the first floor of the two-story villa.