Ghosts of Prague's historic Golden Lane

PRAGUE — Kveta Zrustova, 91, can clearly recall the spring day in 1938 when she entered a tiny house in Prague's famed Golden Lane to ask advice from the fortune teller Madame de Thebes."I was scared stiff. She was sitting in the corner with a cat on her shoulder," said Zrustova who was 18 and wanted to know how her school exams would go.Madame de Thebes, who later died during interrogation by the Nazis after predicting the fall of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich, was just one of the colourful real-life residents of the historic street.Closed since early 2010, the revamped lane at Prague Castle, which is one of the city's top tourist draws, reopened at the start of the month and aims to give visitors a glimpse into the lives of the people who once made it their home.Most of the 20 tiny houses lining the street have been transformed into small museums, detailing the lives of their former residents."The goal is to show visitors the dwellings of ordinary people who lived and worked here, as if they had just left their homes," said historian Pavel Jiras, the man behind the transformation.The houses were built under the arches of the castle fortifications on the basis of a decree issued by German Emperor and Czech King Rudolph II (1552-1612)."A seamstress, a herbal doctor, a goldsmith.... Each house has its own history," said Jiras."There's also a great beauty in the humble lives of those people... a mysterious magic which is in stark contrast to our aggressive and cruel era," he added.Contrary to popular legend, tirelessly relayed by tourist guides, the alley never served as an address for alchemists employed by Rudolph II to try to transform lead into gold.Famous inhabitants of the Golden Lane have included Franz Kafka (1883-1924), the Prague-born Jewish author writing in German, who sought inspiration here from 1916 to 1917."In the house at number 22, Kafka wrote the narrative that appears in the short story "A Country Doctor"," says Gabriela Cinkova, manager of a bookshop now located there."What many people don

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