During this summer period, visitors to Villa Tugendhat will have the opportunity to take two new tours of this UNESCO World Heritage Site. The new tours will complement the existing ones, which are already very popular with the public. Visitors can discover the interior through a night tour, or a newly created route along the terraces of the villa. Photo credit: MMB
Brno, May 13 (BD) – Interest in tours of Villa Tugendhat has been consistently high since it reopened to the public in February 2012. 400,000 visitors have come to the villa since then, and tours are often fully booked months in advance. In addition to its unique technical and architectural design, Villa Tugendhat is also unique for its high proportion of original elements and materials, which have survived the test of time. This high level of authenticity is one of the main reasons why Villa Tugendhat has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2001.
“This fact implies an obligation to protect the villa for future generations, and visits to the interiors are therefore limited in terms of capacity. On the other hand, we consider the problem faced by our colleagues who are not able to welcome visitors as well as we would like. So we looked for ways to reconcile the limits of the building’s current activity with the demands of our visitors,” said the director of the Brno City Museum, Zbyněk Šolc.
Tickets for the new guided tours went on sale on 11 May. The first one is a night tour of the Villa, consisting of a one-hour tour of the interior in the unique atmosphere of a Friday evening. The tours are scheduled from May to September, always start at 8.30pm, and are limited to 16 participants.
A complete novelty is the “Villa from the Outside” tour, which will be offered on weekends from June to September. During this tour, which mainly leads around the terraces of the villa, visitors will also be able to see inside the building into parts of the house that are not normally part of the established tours. “Thanks to Mies’ ingenuity and the connections between the interior and exterior through the large windows of the main living space, we can show and explain to visitors all the key concepts of the house without having to enter the house and interiors directly, so that the visitor can see the same things as on a normal tour,” added Šolc.
The planned duration of this tour is about 40 minutes, so it is an alternative for guests who do not have enough time for a 60 or 90 minute interior tour. For more information, see the official website.
