The story of this place
Completed in 1930 for the industrialist couple Fritz and Grete Tugendhat, this Brno villa is a landmark of the International Style by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Built into a slope, its main floor is one flowing open space divided only by a wall of honey-coloured onyx that glows red at sunset and a curved screen of Macassar ebony, its glass walls able to sink electrically into the floor. Its innovations — air conditioning, vast plate-glass panes — were radical for their time. The Jewish family fled in 1938; the Nazis and later the Soviets misused the house. On 26 August 1992 the leaders of the Czech and Slovak republics met here to negotiate the peaceful division of Czechoslovakia. UNESCO listed it in 2001.