The Bauer Villa
Libodřice 111, Kolín district
+420 770 112 747
Opening Hours
July and August
Thursday to Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
May to June and September to October
Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
November to March closed
(by appointment)
Lunch break 12:30 p.m. to 1 p.m.
Addmission
full CZK 120 | concession CZK 70
Guided tour
full CZK 160 | concession CZK 100
Built in 1912–1914 after the plans of the architect Josef Gočár (1880–1945), the villa is a unique and stylistically characteristic realization of Cubist architecture that blends innovative morphology with a sense of the local and historical context. It showcases references to Baroque elements alongside sharp angles, broken lines and dramatically profiled surfaces. The local land owner Adolf Bauer commissioned the villa during a period when Gočár’s most distinctive Cubist edifices were being created – The House of the Black Madonna and a spa building in Bohdaneč. After the death of Adolf Bauer in 1929 the family lived there for two more years and then moved to Prague. In 1940 the villa along with the estate was confiscated as Jewish property and came under German administration, and in 1948 it was nationalized.
Although the villa is recognized from 1958 as a building of significant cultural value and in 1987 was even included on the Central List of Cultural Monuments, it gradually fell into disrepair. In the new millennium, the Czech Cubism Foundation took up the project of rescuing and renovating the building and eventually opened it to the public. In 2025 the villa became a State-owned property under the management of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague that houses in its interiors a permanent exhibition of Cubist furniture and decorative arts, namely the works of architects Vlastislav Hofman, Pavel Janák, Josef Gočár and Ladislav Machoň, and artefacts from the production of the Artěl artists’ cooperative.
