Amadeus | Lázeňská and Maltézské náměstí — the street they carried Salieri down

The film opens with a scream in the dark. Servants break down a door, find the old composer bleeding at the throat, and haul him out into a freezing lane while he shouts his confession at shuttered windows. That lane is Lázeňská, in Malá Strana, and the doorway is on the corner where it meets Maltézské náměstí.

The whole block belongs to the Knights of Malta, who have held this patch of Prague since the twelfth century, and the street still bends the way it did before anyone thought about traffic. It is short, cobbled, walled on both sides, and lit at night by lamps rather than shopfronts — which is why a 1980s crew could point a camera down it and get 1820s Vienna without dressing a thing. Round the corner on the square, the arcaded house that plays the wigmaker's shop, where Mozart tries on three wigs and cannot decide, now holds the Danish embassy.

None of it is ticketed. This is a residential corner two minutes from Charles Bridge that most visitors walk past on their way to the crowds.

Go after dark, when the square empties and the fountain by the Church of Our Lady Beneath the Chain is the loudest thing in it. The acoustics are the point: shout here and the walls hand it straight back to you.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC-licensed view of a house on Lázeňská street, Malá Strana, Prague.