Embassy of Sweden - Úvoz 156

Exciting. Worked there 1988-91. Known Eliška Junková, "The Queen of the Wheel".

The palace villa in Úvoz Street in Hradčany, where the Swedish embassy is located, was built in 1928 by a prominent lawyer, Josef Růžička. Růžička also obtained a building permit for a magnificent house in the immediate vicinity of the Strahov Monastery thanks to her contacts. He was the head of the legal department at the bank and at the same time the administrator of the business activities of the Strahov Monastery. The lawyer did not enjoy his dream house for a long time. In 1939, the Nazis moved into the villa and arrested Růžička. As Honorary Consul of Panama, he issued visas to many Czechoslovak Jews, thus saving their lives. Růžička himself lost his own in the Mauthausen concentration camp. Sweden began renting part of the building from his wife Anna in 1945. The house of lawyer Růžička, designed by architect Tomáš Šašek, was taken over by the Communists in 1948, who offered Sweden to buy the building. The state refused, saying that he was not buying the confiscated property, but that he would rent the building. After the privatization, when the building was regained by the family of the original owners, Anna Růžičková's daughter Tatiana gave her half of the house to the Swedish state as a thank you for the embassy's care of her mother, and since 1993 Sweden has owned the whole house. In addition to the Růžiček family, the car racer Eliška Junková has also lived in the villa since 1930. The history of the place is also reminded by a plaque on one of the walls of the villa with the inscription "On a beautiful lookout". This is the name of the pub, which stood on the site until the 1920s.

There is a beautiful view from the garden, but it has been opened to the public only once.