For some 800 years most if not all of the Jews living in Prague lived in The Jewish Quarter, originally called V Zidech, later known as the Ghetto, and then as Josefov. Until the end of the 18th century they had little choice but to live there, as the law demanded that all Jews live in the Ghetto. On a few occasions, however, royal decree declared quite the opposite: that all Jews were to be expelled from Prague, including the Ghetto. Adding to their difficulties were the many laws and regulations about what Jews could and couldn't do (had to wear a yellow star when outside the Ghetto, couldn't farm, couldn't own land, couldn't practice a craft outside the Ghetto, etc.) and, of course, the occasional pogrom. In spite of these pressures, Prague's Ghetto was one of the great centers of European Jewish culture, and a number of great writers, scientists, and Talmudic scholars resided there.

The laws giving Jews freedom of movement were about a hundred years old when Kafka was born, and most of the Jewish residents had moved out long before; poor people and criminal elements had replaced them, so that in Kafka's early years Josefov was the poor district of town. Its conspicuous poverty and crime was deemed unacceptable in the heart of a growing and increasingly prosperous city, so between 1896 and 1906 all but a few buildings of the Ghetto were demolished and the area rebuilt. The job was done so thoroughly that it is difficult to imagine the Ghetto from what remains, so only a few carefully arranged perspectives can serve as a reminder.