location

I suppose I am a sort of a location nut. So my main occupation throughout the movie was guessing the identity of the town that is supposed to be Prague. I assumed it had to be somewhere in Northern Italy (at one time the official Italian Sali & Tabacchi sign can be seen above a shop or a bar). Towards the end I thought that in the background I spotted the Sant'Antonio cathedral of Padua, a middle sized town west of Venice, and settled with that. According to imdb (vertical bar on the left - filming locations) it is indeed Padua. I am really impressed how the location was made up to look like a place behind the Iron Curtain.

I would be very interested to know if the public pool is also in Padua. For its time it must have been ultra modern and very elegant, in the film it is used extensively and in a way came through like some positive propaganda for the Communist world.