A Prague writer, in German
Franz Kafka was born in 1883 just off Old Town Square, into Prague's German-speaking Jewish community, and rarely left the city for long during his short life. His novels — The Trial, The Castle, The Metamorphosis — were written in German, not Czech, a reminder of how multilingual the city was under Austro-Hungarian rule. He's buried in the New Jewish Cemetery in the Žižkov district, some distance from the sites listed here.
The rotating head statue
The best-known Kafka landmark for casual visitors is a large, striking kinetic sculpture — a giant head made of stacked, independently rotating steel layers that periodically align into a recognisable face before scrambling again. It's a modern artwork (unveiled in 2014, not a historic site), located near Národní třída, and worth timing a short wait for if you want to see it resolve into focus.
The Franz Kafka Museum
Over in Malá Strana, the Franz Kafka Museum takes a deliberately atmospheric, non-chronological approach to his life and work rather than a standard biographical exhibition — it's more mood than timeline, which either works for you or doesn't. Outside its courtyard, a small fountain sculpture of two men facing each other, both notably not made for family photos in the conventional sense, has become an unofficial landmark in its own right.