Amadeus | Invalidovna — the asylum where an old man confesses to a priest

The whole film is a deposition. An elderly Salieri, wheeled along a corridor in a madhouse, tells a young priest what he did and what he believes God did to him, and everything else is flashback. Those framing scenes were shot at the Invalidovna in Karlín, on the flat ground east of Prague's centre.

The building was meant to be enormous. Kilián Ignác Dientzenhofer designed it in the 1730s as a home for disabled soldiers, modelled on the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris, and the plan called for nine courtyards. Money ran out after one. What stands is a ninth of an idea — still a huge Baroque block with a chapel, long vaulted corridors, and windows that look out onto nothing in particular. For a story about a man convinced he was given just enough talent to recognise how little he had, it is an almost embarrassingly apt building.

Army use, then archives, then the flood of 2002 left it half-abandoned. It has since been taken over for restoration and opened up: basic guided tours run through the courtyard, chapel and upper corridors, and the site hosts exhibitions and concerts.

Take the tour and stay in one of the long first-floor corridors after the group moves on. The echo there is the sound under Salieri's confession, and nobody has bothered to soften it.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC-licensed view of the Invalidovna, Prague-Karlín.