Leoš Janáček Memorial and Chleborád Villa (Památník Leoše Janáčka a Chleborádova vila)

The place where Janáček spent the last 18 years of his life

The organ school that was established by Janáček in 1881 as an alternative to the conservatory Brno moved to the Chleborád Villa on the corner of what are now Smetanova and Kounicova Streets in 1908. Janáček himself was a teacher and director there, from its founding through its transformation into a state conservatory in 1919. The school included subjects such as organ, piano, violin, singing, composing, and musical theory, and it boasts a number of graduates who later became significant musicians and composers, such as Oskar Chlubna, Vilém Petrželka, Václav Kaprál, Břetislav Bakala, and Jan Kunc. From 1919, the villa housed newly established Brno conservatory, as well as Janáček’s master class, founded by the Prague conservatory, attended by Pavel Haas and many others. Today, the villa is the residence of the Department of the History of Music of Moravské zemské muzeum (the Moravian Museum), which includes the Janáček archive.

In the school’s garden, a small house was built for the director where wooden stables had once been. Janáček moved in with his wife Zdenka and their housekeeper Marie Stejskalová in 1910 and lived there until his death (in a sanatorium in Ostrava). The new house was thus the place where his most significant work was created. Today, it is the site of the Leoš Janáček Memorial, which provides visitors with the opportunity to see Janáček’s original study room with the original piano fully preserved.