THE HOUSES
United Kingdom
East Cliff Lodge, Ramsgate, Kent was home to Sir Moses Montefiore (1784-1885). Little remains of the house, but the synagogue and the mausoleum in which Sir Moses and his wife Judith (née Cohen) are interred are still there.
Hughenden Manor, Buckinghamshire was remodelled for the Jewish-born prime minister and novelist Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) by Edward Buckton Lamb (1806-1869).
Strawberry Hill House, Twickenham, London is famous as the fantastical Gothic creation of the writer Horace Walpole (1717-1797) but it was later owned by Frances, Countess Waldegrave (1821-1879), the daughter of a Jewish opera star, and subsequently by Herbert Stern, 1st Baron Michelham (1851-1919), from a European Jewish dynasty of bankers.
Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire was designed by the French architect Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur (1822-1893) for Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild (1839-1898), who was born in Paris, raised in Frankfurt and Vienna, and settled in England.
Nymans House, Sussex. The German-Jewish stockbroker Ludwig Messel (1847-1914) bought the estate in 1890 and the family refashioned the house several times. The iteration that survives today, though partially ruined, dates from the 1920s is in the style of an Old English manor. Nymans is particularly celebrated for its gardens.
France
Villa Kérylos, Beaulieu-sur-Mer, Côte d’Azur is a reimagining of an Ancient Greek villa, built between 1906 and 1912 for the Hellenist, archaeologist, numismatist and politician Théodore Reinach, with the help of the architect Emmanuel Pontremoli (1865-1956).
Italy
Villa ‘La Montesca’, Umbria was built in the 1880s by the liberal politician and agricultural reformer Leopoldo Franchetti (1847-1917) and his collector brother Giulio (1840-1909). After Leopoldo married the American Alice Hallgarten in 1900, she transformed the house into a centre for pedagogical and philanthropic innovation, particularly for women.
Germany
Liebermann Villa, Lake Wannsee, Berlin, was created as a summer retreat from the city for the painter (and first president of the Berlin Secession) Max Liebermann (1847-1935). The design of the house was entrusted to the architect Paul Otto Baumgarten (1873-1946). Liebermann painted it many times.
Czech Republic
Villa Tugendhat, Brno is a seminal masterpiece of modernism, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) for Grete Löw-Beer (1903-1970) and her husband Fritz Tugendhat (1895-1958), both born into prominent families of textile manufacturers.
