First published: 01/05/05.

Christer Sundberg

Tugendhat Villa

Tugendhat Villa (Inscribed)

Tugendhat Villa by Christer Sundberg

Over the years the World Heritage List have taken me to a number of brilliant architectural sites - from the Bauhaus sites in Dessau and Weimar, the Rietveld Schröderhuis in Utrecht, Victor Horta’s brilliant Art Noveaux houses in Brussels to the exceptional architectural pearls in Barcelona by Antoni Gaudí. I am absolutely sure that there are much more to appoint in this category and I hope this is something Unesco will prioritise more in the future.

The Tugenhat Villa in Brno is a functionalistic, open-plan Bauhaus building from 1929, that was built by the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for a rich newlywed couple. With WWII and the communist period to follow, the beautiful villa in the suburb of Ĉerná Pole, have had quite a different history than maybe once intended but over the last 10 years it has been carefully restored to the state it was once meant to be in.

Guided tours are made every hour, unfortunately only in Czech, and I hope that tours in additional languages will be available in the future as well as a removal of the ridiculous photo-ban that no one seemed to follow anyway. At the time of my visit, many other disappointed people had to walk away since only groups of approx 20 people are allowed in per hour. My advise for your visit is therefore to pre-book well in advance.

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