Heritage Walk

A Walk Through Kafka’s Prague

A very brief visit to Prague gives me a chance to try out a gamified way to explore the city. With Questo app in hand we take a look at sites linked to Franz Kafka, woven together by a story with roots in The Metamorphosis.

A Stroll Around Prague

Today’s experiment in tourism came about quite accidentally. I recently had an opportunity to spend a couple of days in Prague. Sightseeing was not an objective of the trip, I had other business to accomplish. But if there are two consistent things about me they are: a) I am an early riser and b) if I have spare time in a new city it’s almost impossible to stop me getting out and exploring.

So the question was not whether I was going to have a look around the Old Town of Prague, but whether there was anything interesting I could do with my time. I was up and about before any cultural institutions were open. And this isn’t my first trip to this marvellous city so I had already covered places like the Národní Galerie, Prague Castle, Kafka Museum and so on. So I decided it might be nice to take advantage of the late summer weather, and do a self-guided walking tour. Then I decided more specifically that it might be nice to do one themed around Franz Kafka.

I’m going to level with you, readers. I did my best to find a nice website or PDF of a walk I could do for free. I’m not against paying for things, it’s just nice when I don’t need to. In this case, however, I was only coming up with paid guided tours, rather than the sort of self-led thing you can do at the crack of dawn. Until, that is, I came across a link to something on Questo. What is that, you ask? Read on, for I shall tell you!

The Gamification Of Tourism

So, Questo. This was the first I’d heard of it. I checked out their website, and discovered Questo is a “role-playing thematic game where you walk around the city solving puzzles in your surroundings to discover new places and their fun history”. Sounds intriguing! Essentially the way it works is that you download an app, and purchase credits you can redeem against specific themed walks. These are put together by individual creators, presumably on their local areas. If the one I did was anything to go by, they combine facts about the city with a narrative that introduces a game element, and questions to solve as you make your way between different sites. Questo uses GPS so once you have downloaded your walk it will come to life as you approach the starting point, and you take it from there.

The walk I had chosen was Kafka-themed, courtesy of Lucy Tours. I stopped at a lot of sites related to his life in Prague. The story and game element was a riff on The Metamorphosis: I won’t reveal too much in case you ever want to try it for yourself. But at different stops there were quiz questions to answer about your surroundings before you’re able to move on. You can ‘buy’ hints using experience points, or skip a question entirely if you’re really stuck. You can also pause play, which was useful for me because I couldn’t get the whole thing done in one morning.

This gamification of tourism is interesting. I wonder if it’s part of a trend along with escape rooms and scavenger hunts? On the one hand it could feel like a bit of a dumbing down of a process of learning and exploring. But on the other hand it’s harmless, a good entry point into exploring a place, and a different lens through which to see a city. I saw places I hadn’t come across in my previous two visits to Prague. A lot of the walks on Questo also seem geared towards families, which makes sense.

But anyway, enough of me pontificating about heritage and tourism, let’s take a look at the city as I explored it with Questo.


Franz Kafka’s Prague: Franz Kafka Memorial To Dům U Minuty







Franz Kafka’s Prague: St Nicolas’s Church To… St Nicholas’s Church







Around The Old Town Square







Franz Kafka’s Prague: University Of Prague To Rasende Reporter









Around Wenceslas Square





A New Day Dawns








Franz Kafka’s Prague: The Conclusion





So how did my foray into gamified tourism go? Well I rather enjoyed it! It was a good way to explore the city, take routes that might not have occurred to me, and find out the story of the buildings I saw along the way. There isn’t much on Questo in London which takes my fancy, but I will check out other cities as I visit to find more hidden stories and fun (not necessarily earlybird) adventures.




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