The Villa Wettach, Chancery Building, or the United States Embassy
Tomsiceva 7, Ljubljana
After Ljubljana's BIG earthquake of 1895, much of the city was rebuilt-- with very nice architecture. One such example of this incredibly "nice architecture" is Villa Wettach which was commissioned in 1897 by the Austrian painter, Heinrich Wettach, so as to have a summer villa for his family. Alfred Bayer, a Viennese, was the building's architect, but Wettach decorated the sides of his home himself with frescoes and sgrafittos. Ultimately, he opened a private painting school in Ljubljana, and the home was in his family until 1946, when it became the Central Technical Library for the technical high school. In 1995 the US bought the building to replace what had been our temporary headquarters nearby. The US has had an embassy in Slovenia since 1992, when the Slovenians declared national independence. It is lovely and pristine inside and out.
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