Stand before Mies van der Rohe’s onyx wall

Villa Tugendhat stands at Černopolní 45, in Černá Pole, the villa district that grew up from 1860 on the old vineyard slopes above Lužánky park, north of Brno’s centre. The house faces south-west, down its garden towards the old town and Špilberk Castle. From the street you see only its top floor: a long, low front with a glass entrance and a garage.

The nearest public-transport stop is Dětská nemocnice. From there it is about ten minutes on foot along Černopolní, which climbs gently past older villas. There is no visitor parking near the villa and the street sits in a resident parking zone, so leave a car in town and take the tram. Your guide meets the group by the gate marked MAIN ENTRANCE, so aim to be there a few minutes before your tour time.

Tours go on sale in weekly batches on Sunday evenings at 18:00 Brno time. Each batch opens roughly one more week of dates, about 12 to 13 weeks ahead. Tours on 14 January 2027, for example, opened on Sunday 18 October 2026, and tours on 10 March 2027 open on Sunday 13 December 2026.

The museum warns that tours may sell out within a few moments on the day sales open, and the calendar bears that out: on 14 October 2026 every Basic and Extended tour was full. The villa cannot add places and does not take reservations, and the tickets it sells cannot be cancelled or moved to another date.

You can book with us for any date, including dates that are not on sale yet. We place your booking the moment your date opens and email your e-ticket once it is issued. If the tour you chose has gone, we tell you and offer the tours still open that day.

The Basic tour lasts 60 minutes. It starts on the bedroom floor at street level, with the upper terrace, the entrance hall and the parents’ and children’s rooms, then goes down to the main living floor: the onyx wall, the ebony dining curve, the winter-garden side, the kitchen and the preparation room. When the weather allows, it ends in the garden, and you can see the exhibition on the floor below.

The Extended tour lasts 90 minutes and adds the technical floor itself: the air-conditioning machinery room, the boiler room, the motor room that lowered the two big windows, the laundry, Fritz Tugendhat’s photographic darkroom and the safe where the family’s fur coats were kept from moths. Both tours take at most 16 people. If machinery, engineering or the way the house actually worked interests you, the Extended tour is the one to choose.

The villa runs tours in Czech and English. On the public timetable the English tours are Extended tours, normally at 12:00 and 15:00 each day the villa is open. Basic tours are guided in Czech.

If you join a Czech-led tour you are not left out. The guides hand out a short printed text in English, German, Italian, Spanish, French, Russian and Japanese, and there is an audio guide you download to your own phone through a QR code, in 12 languages including English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese and Ukrainian. Longer tour texts can also be downloaded in 16 languages, among them Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic and Hebrew. Bring headphones and a charged phone if you plan to use the audio guide.

Each tour has an adult fare, a student fare, a senior fare and a family fare. The student fare is for pupils and students up to 26, who must show a valid student card, ISIC or EYCA card with a photo. The senior fare is for visitors over 65, who should bring photo ID. Without the right document the reduced ticket is not accepted at the gate.

The family fare covers two adults with one or two children under 15. Children under 6 go free, and we add them to your booking at no charge: just tell us their ages in the notes when you book. One booking can take up to three groups. If you are travelling as a larger party, write to us before you book so we can plan the dates with you.

The villa is open Tuesday to Sunday and closed every Monday, all year. From March to October it opens from 10:00 to 18:00; from November to February tours run from 9:00 and the house closes at 17:00. Tours start through the day, with the English Extended tours normally at 12:00 and 15:00.

A few concerts change the calendar in late 2026. On 17 October the villa is open only until 15:00, on 1 and 8 November it closes from noon, and on 16 December it is closed all day for a concert marking 25 years on the UNESCO list. No tours run on 24, 25 and 26 December or on 1 January 2027. Our calendar already greys out the full-day closures.

Your guide collects the group at the gate marked MAIN ENTRANCE on Černopolní. Arrive a little early: the tour leaves at its time, and groups are small enough that the guide will notice who is missing, but cannot hold the house for long. Have your e-ticket ready on your phone or printed.

Stiletto heels are not allowed inside, because the floors are the restored originals, and neither is bulky luggage. Lockers are available before the tour starts, so a day bag or a small case from the train can wait there. Flat shoes that are easy on stairs are the best choice: the tour moves between floors on the house’s own staircases.

You may photograph the garden and the outside of the house freely. Inside, photography is only allowed with a separate photo ticket, which is sold at the villa’s cash desk on the day, and even then without flash or a tripod. We cannot add a photo ticket to your booking, so ask at the desk when you arrive.

If you would rather keep your hands free, the villa’s own virtual tour covers all three floors and the garden, and the museum publishes period photographs of the rooms taken by the family and by the photographer Rudolf Sandalo in 1931. Many visitors find it easier to look properly during the tour and leave the camera in the bag.

The garden falls away below the house as a broad lawn with single trees and a curving path, laid out with the Brno garden architect Markéta Roderová-Müllerová in the spirit Mies called emphasised emptiness. Mies kept the old paths and an overgrown weeping willow that was already there. Both tours step out into it when the weather allows.

During opening hours the garden and the exhibition on the technical floor are open without a guided tour and at no charge, except when snow, ice or wind closes the garden. The exhibition tells the story of the architect, the family and their life in the house up to 1938. If your preferred date is sold out, this is still worth the walk up Černopolní.

The house is built over three floors on a slope, and the tours move between them on the original staircases. If you have limited mobility, write to us before you book and we will ask the villa what is possible for your date and tour before taking payment.

For visitors who are blind or partially sighted the villa keeps haptic models of the house, and for Deaf visitors it has two tablets with interpretation in Czech sign language. Both need arranging in advance, so tell us when you book and we will pass the request to the villa with your booking. Holders of Czech ZTP and ZTP/P disability cards are entitled to a reduced fare; write to us and we will book it for you.

Next door, the Art Nouveau villa that belonged to Grete’s father, Alfred Löw-Beer, now holds the exhibition Jews in Moravia, the villa and its inhabitants, with a café in its open garden. A few steps away on Drobného, the Arnold Villa of 1862 was one of the first houses in Černá Pole. Further out, Villa Stiassni of 1927 and the Jurkovič House of 1906 both open to visitors.

From the living-room windows you will have seen Špilberk Castle on its hill. It is the headquarters of the Brno City Museum, which also runs Villa Tugendhat, and its exhibition For the New Brno presents the city’s architecture from 1919 to 1939. If modern buildings are why you came, the Brno Architectural Manual maps some 400 buildings from 1918 to 1945, with addresses and transport stops.