Villa Tugendhat will probably change the owners

The only Czech modern building written on the list of UNESCO World Heritage is villa Tugendhat in Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic. It belongs to the city of Brno and it is managed by The Museum of the City of Brno. Now the original owners of the villa want it back. They want to do the necessary reconstructions and make a museum of it.

The owners, for whom the vila was built by famous architect Mies van der Rohe, lived in that house for 8 years. It cost them 5 million CZK. For this amount of money they could have built 10 houses. Then they had to escape to Switzerlands after the Natzi occupation. Since the Communist times the villa has decayed.

Villa Tugedhat was also a place where two prime ministers of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, Vaclav Klaus and Vladimir Meciar, talked face to face. Four months later the country split up into two independent countries. In 2001the villa was added to UNESCO World Heritage List.