Explore the real-world places that appear in Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Josefov — Karou's Art School, Karou's Blue Door Portal, Old Town Square, Charles Bridge, Malá Strana and 8 more.
Near Maiselova Street, Josefov — Karou's boarding school setting
Karou attends a boarding school for the arts in Prague's Jewish Quarter, Josefov, where she sketches her chimaerae family — Brimstone, Issa, Yasri, and Twiga — in her worn sketchbook. Her classmates believe these are fantastical inventions, marveling at the hideous detail and beauty of her drawings. It is here that Karou lives her double life: a seemingly normal art student with blue hair grown by magic, who secretly runs errands through a portal hidden in a cobblestoned alleyway.
Josefov, Prague's former Jewish ghetto, was established in the 13th century and became one of Europe's most significant Jewish communities. The district survived WWII's destruction of many European Jewish quarters, preserving its historic synagogues and the famous Old Jewish Cemetery.
Josefov is now one of Prague's most visited neighborhoods, home to six historic synagogues and the Jewish Museum. The area is densely packed with galleries, boutiques, and cultural institutions, making it a plausible home for a fine arts school.
Visit: Jewish Museum in Prague (museum)
Near Dlouhá Street, Old Town — The hidden doorway to Brimstone's shop
Throughout Old Town's winding lanes, Karou locates a magical blue door that serves as a portal to Brimstone's wish-merchant shop — a place between worlds. She passes through it regularly on errand runs for Brimstone, collecting teeth from dealers around the globe. The door appears in different locations at different times, accessible only to those who know how to find it. When the seraphim begin burning handprints into doorways across the world, these portals are destroyed one by one, severing Karou from the only family she has ever known.
Prague's Old Town is famous for its narrow, medieval streets that have remained largely unchanged since the 13th and 14th centuries. The labyrinthine alleyways off Dlouhá and Týnská streets inspired generations of writers and artists with their mysterious, time-worn character.
The streets around Old Town retain their medieval layout and cobblestone paving. Many of the arched passageways and courtyards referenced in Laini Taylor's atmospheric descriptions of Prague can still be walked today.
Visit: Prague Old Town Walking Tour (tour)
Staroměstské náměstí — Where Karou encounters the seraph Akiva
It is in the atmospheric heart of Prague that Karou first encounters Akiva, the fearsome golden-eyed seraph sent to destroy the chimaera portals. He is devastatingly beautiful and seemingly inhuman, his wings folded unseen by humans but burning with celestial fire. Their confrontation is charged with impossible tension — he has come to kill, yet something in their meeting feels like recognition, like a memory neither of them can fully access. The square becomes the stage for a moment that will unravel everything Karou believes about herself.
Old Town Square has been Prague's central gathering place since the 10th century. It is home to the famous Astronomical Clock (Orloj), installed in 1410, and the Church of Our Lady before Týn. The square witnessed the execution of 27 Czech Protestant leaders in 1621 following the Battle of White Mountain.
Old Town Square remains one of Europe's most visited public spaces. The Astronomical Clock draws enormous crowds on the hour when its mechanical figures parade. The square hosts Christmas and Easter markets annually and is ringed by baroque and gothic architecture.
Visit: Prague Astronomical Clock (historic site)
Karlův most — Karou's crossing between worlds, literal and symbolic
Charles Bridge, lined with its thirty baroque saints standing sentinel in the mist, appears in Karou's world as a place of threshold and transit. The bridge's brooding gothic towers and the Vltava River beneath it contribute to the novel's atmosphere of Prague as a city perpetually balanced between the mundane and the magical. Karou crosses it as a student moving through her ordinary life, unaware that the city's ancient stones mirror the dual nature of her own existence — beautiful surface, monstrous depths.
Charles Bridge was built in 1357 under King Charles IV and completed in the early 15th century, connecting Old Town with Malá Strana. Its 30 baroque statues were added throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. For centuries it was the only crossing over the Vltava in Prague.
Charles Bridge is one of the most photographed landmarks in Europe and a beloved pedestrian crossing. Street artists, musicians, and vendors line the bridge daily. Several of the original statues have been replaced with replicas, with originals preserved in the Lapidárium museum.
Visit: Charles Bridge (historic site)
Lesser Town — Karou's wanderings through gaslit streets
Malá Strana, with its baroque palaces and hidden garden courtyards, forms part of the dreamlike backdrop through which Karou moves between assignments for Brimstone. The district's steep cobblestone streets and ornate doorways feed Taylor's vivid portrayal of Prague as a city that exists slightly outside of ordinary reality — a place where magic could genuinely hide in the shadows between lampposts. Karou sketches its architecture in her notebooks alongside her chimaerae, blurring the lines between her two worlds.
Malá Strana, or Lesser Town, was settled in the 13th century and developed into a prestigious residential area for the Czech nobility and foreign ambassadors in the baroque era. Its palaces, gardens, and the Church of Saint Nicholas are among the finest baroque architecture in Central Europe.
Malá Strana is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of Prague's most beautiful and well-preserved districts. The Wallenstein Garden and Vrtba Garden are open to the public. The neighborhood is quieter than Old Town and popular for atmospheric walks.
Visit: Wallenstein Garden (park)
Smetanovo nábřeží 2, New Town — A gathering place of artists
Prague's legendary café culture is woven into Karou's life as an art student. She meets her best friend Zuzana at cafés where they argue about Karou's mysterious absences and the strange bruises from her errand runs. Zuzana — sharp-tongued, tiny, and fiercely loyal — is one of the few anchors in Karou's ordinary life. Over coffee, Karou deflects questions about her blue hair and the ex-boyfriend Kaz, while Zuzana sees through every evasion. Cafés like Slavia represent everything fragile and human about Karou's Prague existence.
Café Slavia opened in 1884 and became one of Prague's most celebrated literary and artistic institutions. It was a regular haunt of writers including Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, and later Czech dissident intellectuals. The café overlooks the Vltava River and the National Theatre.
Café Slavia remains open and operational, still serving coffee in its historic art deco interior. It continues to be a popular meeting spot for artists, students, and tourists and is celebrated for its view of Prague Castle across the river.
Visit: Café Slavia (restaurant)
Hradčany — Looming over the city, mirroring celestial power
Prague Castle's vast silhouette dominates the city's skyline and serves as a looming metaphor throughout the novel — a palace of power watching over the mortal world below, not unlike the seraphic strongholds that overshadow the chimaera world of Elsewhere. When Karou walks Prague at night after a dangerous portal errand, the castle's lit towers remind her that power structures exist in every world, and that her own origins are bound to something far older and darker than she understands.
Prague Castle is the largest ancient castle complex in the world by area, covering nearly 70,000 square meters. Founded in the 9th century, it has served as the seat of Bohemian kings, Holy Roman Emperors, and Czech presidents. St. Vitus Cathedral within the complex took nearly 600 years to complete.
Prague Castle is one of the most visited tourist attractions in Europe, drawing over 1.8 million visitors per year. The complex includes St. Vitus Cathedral, the Old Royal Palace, St. George's Basilica, the Golden Lane, and numerous museums and galleries.
Visit: Prague Castle (historic site)
Staré Město — Gothic spires in the heart of Old Town
The twin Gothic spires of the Church of Our Lady before Týn, rising dramatically behind the Old Town Square, contribute to the eerie, layered atmosphere of Karou's Prague. The church's dark silhouette — spires like thorns piercing the sky — echoes the aesthetics of the chimaera world, where beauty is inseparable from menace. Taylor uses Prague's Gothic architecture as a visual language for the collision between the angelic and the monstrous, between Akiva's burning light and Brimstone's bone-carved workshop.
The Church of Our Lady before Týn was begun in 1365 and became the main church of Prague's Old Town. Its twin towers, each 80 meters tall, are among the most recognizable features of the Prague skyline. The astronomer Tycho Brahe is buried inside the church.
Týn Church is open to visitors and holds regular religious services. The interior contains significant baroque art and the tomb of Tycho Brahe. The church is best viewed from Old Town Square, where its spires rise dramatically above the rooftops.
Visit: Church of Our Lady before Týn (historic site)
Národní 2, New Town — Arts and performance in Karou's city
Karou's best friend Zuzana is a puppeteer and performer deeply embedded in Prague's arts world, and the grand cultural institutions of the city — including the National Theatre on the Vltava riverbank — form the backdrop to their friendship. Zuzana's fierce theatrical personality and her puppet theatre work are grounded in Prague's long tradition of marionette arts. The world of performance and illusion that surrounds them parallels Karou's own perpetual performance of normality, hiding her chimaerae family behind the mask of an ordinary student.
The National Theatre was built between 1868 and 1881 as a symbol of Czech national identity and cultural revival. Funded by public donations, it was completed, then burned down just weeks after opening, then rebuilt. Its golden roof and riverside location make it one of Prague's defining landmarks.
The National Theatre operates as a premier performing arts venue with opera, ballet, and drama companies in residence. The building is open for performances and occasional tours. Its neo-Renaissance facade along the Vltava riverbank is one of Prague's most beautiful architectural set pieces.
Visit: National Theatre Prague (theater)
Náměstí Míru area — Kaz's neighborhood, site of a painful confrontation
Kaz, Karou's manipulative ex-boyfriend who uses her for attention and social status, lives in the residential Vinohrady district. In one of the novel's early emotional scenes, Karou discovers Kaz has been using their relationship as a performance — he is seen with another girl and has been spreading rumors about Karou. Her response is characteristically magical: she uses one of Brimstone's wishes to make Kaz instantly, violently, itchy — a petty but satisfying deployment of supernatural power against ordinary human cruelty.
Vinohrady, whose name means 'royal vineyard,' developed in the late 19th century as an upscale residential district for Prague's middle class. Its streets are lined with art nouveau and neo-baroque apartment buildings and centered on the elegant Náměstí Míru (Peace Square) and its neo-Gothic Church of Saint Ludmila.
Vinohrady is one of Prague's most desirable residential neighborhoods, popular with expats and young professionals. It retains its handsome late 19th-century apartment buildings and has a vibrant café, restaurant, and bar scene centered around Náměstí Míru and Mánesova Street.
Visit: Náměstí Míru (landmark)
Petřín — The green hillside overlooking the city
Petřín Hill, with its forested slopes rising steeply above Malá Strana and its views over the whole of Prague, is the kind of liminal green space where Karou might retreat between worlds — between the ordinary life of an art student and the terrifying, wonderful reality of Brimstone's shop. The hill's isolation and its position overlooking the city make it a symbolic watchtower, a place where one can see the whole of the human world spread below and feel, for a moment, the vertigo of existing between two lives.
Petřín Hill has been a green refuge within Prague since the medieval era. It features a miniature replica of the Eiffel Tower built in 1891, a mirror maze, and the Štefánik Observatory. The hill is connected to Malá Strana by a historic funicular railway dating from 1891.
Petřín is a beloved public park and one of Prague's most popular green spaces. The Petřín Lookout Tower offers panoramic views over the city and is open to visitors. The rose gardens, orchards, and winding paths make it a favorite destination for both locals and tourists.
Visit: Petřín Lookout Tower (landmark)
Týn 4, Old Town — English-language books in the heart of Prague
Prague's Old Town is dotted with intimate bookshops and hidden courtyard establishments that feed the novel's atmosphere of a city where stories are alive in the stones. Karou's identity as an art student and sketchbook keeper places her in the world of Prague's creative and literary community. Bookshops tucked into Týn courtyards — where English, Czech, and a dozen other languages coexist on dusty shelves — mirror the novel's own layering of worlds: one foot in the ordinary, one in the mythological.
The Týn Courtyard (Ungelt) is one of Prague's oldest trading posts, mentioned in records as early as the 11th century. Foreign merchants were historically required to store their goods here and pay customs duties. The courtyard was restored in the 1990s and now houses shops and restaurants.
The Anagram Bookshop inside the Týn Courtyard is one of Prague's best English-language independent bookshops. It stocks a wide range of literature and hosts occasional literary events. The courtyard itself is a peaceful escape from the crowds of Old Town Square just steps away.
Visit: Anagram Bookshop (library)
Rašínovo nábřeží — The river as mirror and boundary
The Vltava River runs through Karou's Prague like a dark ribbon of time, separating neighborhoods and reflecting the city's spires in its surface. Taylor's Prague is a city of thresholds — between old and new, human and supernatural — and the river is its most ancient boundary. Karou walks the embankments in the novel's quieter moments, the cold Czech air around her, carrying her sketchbook and the weight of a life divided between a world of art students and a world of chimaera who traffic in wishes and teeth.
The Vltava is Bohemia's longest river, running 430 kilometers through the Czech Republic. It has shaped Prague's development for over a thousand years, serving as a trading route, defensive barrier, and source of power. The river flooded catastrophically in 2002, causing extensive damage across the city.
The Vltava riverbanks offer some of Prague's most scenic walks, particularly along the embankments of New Town and along Kampa Island. River cruises operate year-round. The Dancing House, designed by Frank Gehry, stands prominently on the New Town embankment.
Visit: Prague Riverboat Cruise (tour)
More by Laini Taylor: All Laini Taylor books
Other nearby maps: Berlin Noir by Philip Kerr locations map