Slavné vily Prahy 6 - Bubeneč

This book, prepared by FOIBOS BOOKS, is a probe into the remarkable urban space of Prague, a set of villa buildings in Prague-Bubenč, forming an exceptional enclave in the urban agglomeration.

From an architectural point of view, the most interesting is the phase preceding the First World War.  In these periods, and especially at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, a new social status of the villa was established, announcing a new lifestyle and a broad cultural and social mission. The villa was conceived as a gesamtkunstwerk, with all interior features, exterior form and garden.

The stories of the villas of Drumenec are told by the oldest of them, the Villa Lann, built in the Italianate style with Pompeian interiors with murals, a kind of poetic dream of a pleasant life. Then there are a series of neo-Renaissance classical villas and later "modern" villas, aiming for a cultural revival of social life. Let us recall here Jan Kotěra's Suchard Villa, heralding a new age, a new sensibility, a new true art. Today it is almost unbelievable what cultural and social significance this and other similar buildings had at that time. Or the nearby Koulova Villa, which introduced patriotic folk motifs. It represented an attempt at a national style, like the nearby Jurkovič villa.

In the interwar period, the wealthiest clientele concentrated in the Bubeneč district, preferring a representative historicist style for their palatial villas, as evidenced, for example, by the Petschek villas.

Each villa is a story, the life that takes place in it can be told like a novel. Every era brings changes, generational, stylistic, operational. Let's just notice how, for example, in the interwar period, garages were added to the houses.

The villa architecture in Prague-Bubenč still deserves full attention today, both in terms of the history of residential villa architecture and in terms of social, cultural and political events and destinies.

In more than 270 pages, the authors of the book present 64 existing villas and show how time and fate played a game of disappearance on nine other buildings.

The author's team was led by Prof. Petr Urlich and Jiří Podrazil took contemporary photo documentation for the book.

Czech edition