One of the things I found during my weeks long trip in Czechia was that it is a country of Baroque, its World Heritage Sites are mainly built or have some element in this style, as a result when I visited Tugendhat Villa, the visit was like a fresh air. On the way to the villa from my hotel which I carefully picked because of its location that I could walk to the villa easily after leant a problem of lacking carpark, it was clearly that Tugendhat villa was located in the nice wealthy neighborhood with many nice houses around. When I finally approached the villa, its appearance was quite surprising, while the architectural design of this white building was quite striking, it one story height remind me some kind of garage or storage than a living house. When the gate was opened, suddenly almost twenty persons appeared from nowhere for the guide tour, all of them were Czechs and Slovakians.

After showed the e-ticket and paid for extra photo fee, surprisingly I was the only person who made advance booking! The lovely guide asked all visitors to wait at the rear outdoor terrace where I could see the great view of Brno. The tour was only in Czech, but the guide was kind enough to explain everything I questioned in English. After briefing welcome explanation, the guide took us inside to see the first floor or the street level floor. I was surprised that all the bedrooms and private space were located on this floor, next to the street. The highlight was the villa entrance room with beautiful curved translucent glass with cross shaped shiny chrome coated columns and white travertine floor, such a revolutionary design but simple and elegant. Then we went to the second floor, this maybe the most impressive thing of the whole villa. A large room with onyx wall and such large windows, with all the furniture, plants, and small decorations, the villa was incredibly cozy, I even though that I could live here. With no separating wall all spaces, library, study room and entertainment area were connected similar to Asian houses and become one big room. The dining room were equally impressive with size adjustable table made from expensive wood from Southeast Asia. Even in modernism, the wealth and luxury lifestyle of the owner could display in the same par of all those gilded baroque decorations. After that the guide showed the winter garden, kitchen and other rooms, quite plain but impressive for revolutionary idea and design. Then we continued to the third floor which had small exhibition and souvenir shop. I quickly went to see the rear garden for its nice view of the villa, before ending my visit.

I really enjoyed my visit to Tugendhat Villa; it was beautiful and gave me “wow” similar to the first time I went to Rietveld Schroder House in Utrecht. One of the things I felt when visiting this villa was that such design could be adopt and adjust to anybody house, the design could connect to normal lifestyle more than Le Corbusier’s work of Villa Savoye despite of many similarities of these two buildings. In my opinion Tugendhat is the third best World Heritage Site the Czechia has after Prague and Cesky Krumlov.