The renovated Tugendhat villa in Brno was opened to the public today

photo: David Židlický

Brno - The Brno heritage-protected villa Tugendhat has today opened to the public for the first time after a two-year restoration. Visitors were able to view, for example, the restored semi-circular Makassar wall, which art historian Miroslav Ambroz rescued from the canteen of the Faculty of Law. It returned to its original place after decades. People showed interest in visiting the villa on the first day, although it was not completely sold out. Before the opening for the first tour group, there were 12 free spots remaining for today, as found out by ČTK from the reservation system.
    Guides prepared two tours for visitors - a standard one-hour tour and a technical tour, which lasts 90 minutes. In the second case, the tour route is expanded to include the technical facilities of the villa. Visitors will also see the air conditioning machine room, boiler room, machine room for electrical window operation, laundry room, photo lab, and a fur coat safe.
    Admission costs 300 or 350 crowns for adults, which is about a hundred crowns more expensive than before the heritage restoration. Mayor Roman Onderka (ČSSD) previously defended the ticket prices as reasonable. According to him, the Tugendhat villa ranks among the most prestigious European sites of modern architecture, and the price therefore corresponds to similar tourist destinations abroad. He also emphasized that in the villa, guides can conduct tours in one group with a maximum of 20 people. Thus, the villa is not comparable to sites that can be visited by 100 or 200 people at the same time.
    The villa, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, belongs to Brno. It is managed by the Museum of the City of Brno, located at Špilberk. Tours can be booked through the reservation system available at rezervace.spilberk.cz. The villa is open daily except Mondays.
    The villa was designed in 1928 by the prominent German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and the owners moved in in December 1930. Just a few years later, they left the country in fear of Nazism. The director of the Museum of the City of Brno, Pavel Ciprian, described the architectural solution at the ceremonial opening a few days ago as radical. According to him, Mies abolished the boundaries between rooms and the interior and exterior, thereby influencing the architecture of the entire 20th century.