Villa Tugendhat

Built for Fritz and Greta Tugendhat, a young Jewish couple in the textile business, on a hillside above Brno. The main living level is a single continuous room divided only by an onyx wall and a curved macassar ebony screen, opened on two sides by glass walls that lower into the basement; Mies and Lilly Reich designed the interior fittings and much of the furniture together. The Tugendhats fled Czechoslovakia in 1938 as the Nazis approached; the house survived occupation, a period as a gymnastics school, and use as a children's rehabilitation clinic before restoration returned it close to its 1930 state. It was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2001, the only work of modern architecture in the Czech Republic to hold that status.