When the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designed a house for the young couple Grete and Fritz Tugendhat in Brno at the end of the 1920s, he created one of the masterpieces of modern architecture. Completed in 1930, the villa sits on a slope above the city, with a vast open-plan living room enclosed by glass walls that could be lowered into the floor, a wall of onyx, and chrome-plated steel columns. It was inscribed on the UNESCO list in 2001, and it remains one of the most influential houses of the twentieth century.
The Tugendhat family, who were Jewish, fled Czechoslovakia in 1938, before the Nazi occupation. The house was confiscated, damaged during the war, and used for various purposes over the following decades. In 1992, the leaders of the Czech and Slovak republics met here to sign the agreement that led to the peaceful division of Czechoslovakia. The villa was carefully restored and reopened in 2012.
Visits are by guided tour only and must be booked well in advance, often weeks or months ahead, especially in summer. The house is in the residential area of Černá Pole, a short ride from the city centre, and the garden below the terrace gives a lovely view across the rooftops toward Špilberk castle. Even if the tours are full, it is worth walking past to see how modestly the house presents itself to the street.
Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic, with a population of over three hundred and sixty thousand, has a lively centre, with a castle, cathedral and many cafés and bars. It is also home to the Masaryk circuit, where the Czech MotoGP was held for many years. For riders, the countryside around Brno is pleasant, with winding roads through the Moravian Karst to the north, with caves and gorges, and the wine region of South Moravia to the south, with the Lednice-Valtice cultural landscape, another UNESCO site, with its chateaux and parks. Czech motorways need a vignette.