The Short Villa Trail

Trail Starts Here: Nezvalova, Malšovická
First object: Malšovice Bridge
Josef Gočár, 1925
Public transport: Stará nemocnice (BUS 11, 17; TROLEJBUS 7)
GPS: 50.207539, 15.841700, stáhnout GPX nebo KML
Lenght of trail: 1,1 KM, 15 min
3

The Short Villa Trail takes in the oldest residential architecture in Hradec Králové. After 1895, when former fortress land was transferred to the city, one of the first newly divided and built-up areas was the area between Komenského Street and Orlické nábřeží Embankment. From 1902, three Neo-Renaissance villas, designed by Václav Rejchl, several villas in historical styles (such as Bohumil Hobzek’s villa designed by Josef Fanta) and in the conservative style of Art Nouveau (such as Rejchl’s own villa, later sold to Otakar Klumpar, and Jan Schimann’s villa designed by local architect František Černý) were built there. The avant-garde villas built in the early 1930s include Walter Stein’s villa designed by Jan Rejchl and Emília Waldeková Kmochová’s villa designed by František Janda, both featuring strip windows, terraces, and flat roofs. The two villas represented the most progressive modern architecture in Hradec Králové. Other buildings on the trail include the largely wooden Students’ Hall, which served as a dormitory, a dining hall, and day care centre for commuting students; it was designed in traditional architectural forms of the early 1920s. The trail ends in Hradební Street at two villas, which in turn represent traditional interwar architecture: František Hrouzek’s villa designed by Jan Rejchl and Mr and Mrs Matějka’s villa designed by architect František Machač.