Walk with Kafka in Prague

The Sixt-House

Celetná Street 2, Old Town

The Sixt-HouseCeletná Street got its name from the “Czaltners”, bakers of gingerbread, who at the beginning of the 14th century offered their wares for sale here. During Kafka’s time it was an elegant street for shopping.

The Sixt-House The Kafka family lived on the Sixt-House between August 1888 and May 1889. Its name comes from Sixt von Ottersdorf who traded another building for this one in 1560 and whose family owned it until 1621. The history of the building reaches back much further, the still extant arch cross and barrel vault-construction from around 1220 indicate origins in the Romanic period. In the more than 800 years it has stood here the building has experienced numerous expansions and reconstructions and many an illustrious personage lived here, the Roman tribune Cola di Rienzo or Francesco Petrarca and even Dr. Johannes Faust has been mentioned. The name of the Bohemian martyr Ludmila, the grandmother of St Wenceslas, has been brought into connection with this house. After the revolt of the nobles in 1621, the building was confiscated and sold to Philipp Fabricius Platter von Rosenfeld, one of the clerks of the Bohemian court offices, for 5000 guilders. In 1618, he along with others had been thrown out of the window of the “Old Town Hall” in the Prague Castle, in the famous “Prague defenestration”. After a succession of owners it passed to Wenzel and Anna Löschner and stayed in that family’s possession for the entire second half of the 19th century, also during the time when Hermann Kafka and his family rented a flat here.