Explore the real-world places that appear in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera. 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 Old Town Square Balcony (Kinský Palace), Jan Hus Memorial, Charles Bridge, Mirek's Apartment Quarter, Vinohrady, Prague Castle and 7 more.
Old Town Square — February 1948, Gottwald's speech
The novel opens with Communist leader Klement Gottwald stepping onto the balcony of a Baroque palace in Old Town Square in February 1948 to address a vast crowd. It is snowing and cold, so his comrade Clementis lends him his fur cap. Years later Clementis is hanged and airbrushed out of the propaganda photograph, leaving only his cap on Gottwald's head. Kundera uses this image to show how a regime erases people and rewrites memory.
Kinský Palace is a Rococo building completed in 1765 on Old Town Square. In February 1948 Gottwald addressed crowds from its balcony after the Communist takeover. The palace later housed the National Gallery's graphic collection.
Kinský Palace is part of the National Gallery Prague and hosts exhibitions. The balcony overlooks the square, which is one of Prague's busiest tourist spaces.
Visit: Kinský Palace (National Gallery Prague) (museum)
Old Town Square — monument and symbol of national memory
The square around the Hus monument is the stage for the opening political theatre in which Czech history is manipulated. Kundera's meditation on national memory, and on rulers who erase the past, plays out against this symbolic space. Gustáv Husák, the 'president of forgetting', embodies the regime that later purges memory from Czech life.
The Art Nouveau monument by Ladislav Šaloun was unveiled in 1915 on the 500th anniversary of Hus's burning at the stake. It became a rallying point for Czech national identity.
The monument stands in the middle of Old Town Square and is a major landmark. Visitors gather around it daily, and it hosts public events and gatherings.
Visit: Jan Hus Memorial (monument)
Vltava River — Prague's historic crossing
Prague's old bridge and riverbank form the backdrop for the book's recurring images of Czech streets, memory, and loss. Characters such as Mirek, who fights to keep the past alive, move through the city that the regime is rewriting. The city's landmarks stand as witnesses to what officials try to make people forget.
Construction of the Gothic bridge began in 1357 under Charles IV and it was completed in the early 15th century. It lined with Baroque statues from the 17th and 18th centuries and long served as the main link between Old Town and Lesser Town.
The pedestrian-only bridge is crowded with tourists, artists, and musicians. It is among the most visited sites in Prague.
Visit: Charles Bridge (landmark)
Vinohrady district — Mirek's diary and the erased love letters
In 'The Letters I Lost', Mirek tries to retrieve his old love letters from his former lover Zdena, because they embarrass him politically and personally. He wants to erase his own past just as the state erases others. Mirek is later arrested for his dissident activities. The story shows that the individual too falsifies memory.
Vinohrady developed in the late 19th century as an elegant residential district with apartment blocks and tree-lined avenues. It became a home to Prague's middle-class intelligentsia.
Vinohrady is a fashionable residential area with cafés, parks, and restaurants. Its apartment buildings remain private homes.
Hradčany — seat of Czechoslovak power
Prague Castle is the seat of the presidency and the symbol of the state that Husák, 'the president of forgetting', governs after the 1968 Soviet invasion. Kundera describes how the leadership liquidates Czech history, culture, and memory from this center of power. Writers and historians are dismissed as the nation is made to forget its own past.
The castle complex dates to the 9th century and is among the largest ancient castle complexes in the world. It has housed Bohemian kings, Holy Roman emperors, and Czechoslovak presidents.
The castle is a major tourist attraction with St. Vitus Cathedral, galleries, and gardens. It still serves as the official office of the Czech president.
Visit: Prague Castle (historic site)
New Town — 1968 invasion and mass demonstrations
The Soviet invasion of August 1968 and its aftermath are the historical wound behind the entire novel. Wenceslas Square was the focus of protest and the site where Czechs confronted Warsaw Pact tanks. The consequence is the purge in which intellectuals lose their jobs, Mirek is persecuted, and Husák rules over a nation instructed to forget.
The boulevard was laid out in the 14th century as a horse market and became the scene of major events in Czech history, including the 1968 Soviet invasion and the 1989 Velvet Revolution.
The square is a busy commercial boulevard with hotels, shops, and the National Museum at its head. The statue of St. Wenceslas stands in front of the museum.
Visit: Wenceslas Square (landmark)
Lesser Town — park and lookout above Prague
Prague's green hills offer a retreat from the political world that dominates the book's Czech sections. Kundera's characters, caught between laughter and forgetting, seek escape in nature and in memory. The hill is a quiet place of lovers and walkers that contrasts with the city's official history.
Petřín Hill has been a recreational area since medieval times. The lookout tower was built in 1891 for the Prague Jubilee Exhibition, modeled on the Eiffel Tower.
The hill is a large public park with gardens, a funicular railway, an observation tower, and a mirror maze. It is a favorite spot for locals and visitors.
Visit: Petřín Park and Lookout Tower (park)
Vinohrady — media and the censorship of voices
Kundera's narrative about the 1968 aftermath includes the silencing of intellectuals, among them Czech broadcasters and writers who lose their positions. Tamina, Karel, and others live in a world where the state controls voices and public memory. The book shows how an authoritarian state erases a nation's cultural conversation.
The Czech Radio headquarters on Vinohradská Street was built in the 1930s and became a symbol of resistance during the 1945 Prague Uprising and the 1968 invasion. Radio staff broadcast defiance as Soviet tanks entered.
The building remains the headquarters of Czech Radio. A memorial to those who died defending it in 1968 stands outside.
Visit: Czech Radio Building Memorial (monument)
Náměstí Republiky — Art Nouveau concert hall
Kundera's musicological chapters, including his meditations on Beethoven, Janáček, and the Czech musical tradition, find a home in Prague's grand concert halls. The book treats music as a form of memory and as a counterweight to political forgetting. Karel's and Mirek's cultural world is one of art that the regime tries to suppress.
Municipal House opened in 1912 as a cultural center in the Art Nouveau style. Czechoslovak independence was declared here on October 28, 1918.
It hosts concerts by the Prague Symphony Orchestra in Smetana Hall, as well as cafés and a restaurant. Guided tours are available.
Visit: Municipal House (theater)
Hradčany — books, memory, and censorship
Kundera's character Hübl, a historian dismissed after 1968, has his library confiscated by the state, which sends in workers to dispose of his books. The story evokes the way the regime destroys the written record of a nation. Libraries stand as symbols of the memory that authorities want erased.
Strahov Monastery was founded in 1143 by Premonstratensian monks. Its library holds hundreds of thousands of volumes in its Baroque halls, which survived centuries of war and political upheaval.
The Strahov Library halls are open to visitors, and the monastery has a brewery and gallery. The Theological and Philosophical Halls are among Prague's finest interiors.
Visit: Strahov Library (library)
Žižkov — burial ground of Prague's dead
Kundera's book is haunted by death, memory, and the dead who are forgotten or rewritten by the living. The figure of Tamina, who mourns her husband and tries to hold on to memories of him, reflects the cemetery's theme of remembrance. The author's meditations on mortality and on what endures find a natural setting in the city's graveyards.
Olšany Cemeteries opened in 1680 during a plague epidemic and expanded to become the largest burial ground in Prague. Many notable Czech figures are buried here, including Jan Palach, who set himself on fire in 1969 to protest the Soviet occupation, though his remains were later moved to a cemetery in Všetaty.
The cemetery complex is open to the public and is a quiet park-like space. Visitors come to see the graves of famous Czechs and historic monuments.
Visit: Olšany Cemetery (landmark)
Lesser Town — literary Prague
Kundera's novel stands in the tradition of Prague literature, and its mixture of fable, essay, and autobiography echoes Kafka's world of bureaucratic absurdity. The state's treatment of writers in the book, from silencing to forced exile, recalls the Kafkaesque world. Kundera himself left Czechoslovakia for France in 1975, and the book was written in exile.
Franz Kafka lived and wrote in Prague, and his works were banned in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and again after 1968. The Franz Kafka Museum opened in Malá Strana in 2005, on the bank of the Vltava.
The Franz Kafka Museum presents exhibitions on his life and work. Nearby sits the controversial sculpture of two men urinating into a pool shaped like the Czech Republic.
Visit: Franz Kafka Museum (museum)
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