<a>Tours of Brno with the Museum are a success, people have sold out the tours.</a>

photo: Michal Doležel

Brno – This year's summer novelty from the Museum of the City of Brno, called Strolls Through Brno with the Museum, is achieving success. There was such great interest in tours of the private Engelsmann villa on Hlinky Street that their number had to be doubled, and even so, they are sold out, said museum spokesperson Barbora Kachlířová to ČTK.

"In the past, we as a museum organized guided tours of the Central Cemetery, but only this year did the project of guided tours outside the museum get its own name. This summer, thanks to the activity of our historian Michal Doležel and the museum's management, we received the opportunity to offer people tours of the normally inaccessible Engelsmann villa, which is also led by its current owner Petra Dovala," Kachlířová stated.

People could buy tickets online through the BrnoiD website. The original five dates in July were sold out so quickly that the museum had to add a second tour for all dates, and for two dates in August, it offered two tours for each date.

The Engelsmann villa is located on Hlinky Street opposite the exhibition grounds. It was built in 1932 by Brno industrialist of Jewish origin Felix Engelsmann, but in 1939 he had to flee Czechoslovakia from the Nazis. The Gestapo then confiscated the villa and used it for the needs of Nazi officers. After World War II, the communist regime nationalized the villa, and it was owned by the First Brno Engineering Works until 2000.

The Strolls Through Brno with the Museum project will continue with similar tours in the coming years, its program is still in development. The Museum of the City of Brno manages the Tugendhat villa and the Arnold villa, which opened this year. Both of these buildings border the villa of the Brno factory family, the Löw-Beer villa, which is managed by the Museum of Brno. In the future, the gardens of all three villas should be connected; for now, only the gardens of Löw-Beer and Tugendhat are connected. Another famous Brno villa, the Stiassni villa in Pisárky, falls under the care of the National Heritage Institute, while the Jurkovič villa is managed by the Moravian Gallery in Brno. The festival Štetl is striving for occasional access to the villas of Jewish manufacturers; this year, visitors will be able to visit the former Bloch factory on Rybářská Street, while last year it was the Wittal villa.