Castles of Serbia

Tomán villa

Vrbas

In the main street named after Marshall Tito is Toman’s Villa, a sezessionist palace designed by an architect from Budapest. Characteristic of sezession, it is surrounded by wrought iron gates of the same style. The main façade is decorated with art nouveau motifs and is a symmetrical construction with semicircular lateral avant-corpses and a shallow central part with an entrance and a porch with two pillars and two half-pillars supporting the arches. The central part is crowned by a curved gable, decorated with four vertical ceramic strips enamelled with tulip motifs. The windows end elliptically and are framed by shaped pilasters topped by the capitals with floral motifs. The arches of the porch and those above some windows are decorated with blue ceramic tiles made in the famous Zsolnay factory. Other facades are more simply decorated, with three avant-corpses, the middle of which has three arched finished windows. The building is tender pink in colour with white decorations. Unfortunately, it is streaked with graffiti. There are concrete decorations on the eves of the roof, and there is a enclosed round porch in the yard.

The house was built by the Jewish landowning family Tomán, as a representative house for living. The Toman family had large estates in the north of the Vrbas and were engaged in agriculture and grain trade. Even today, near Vrbas, there is a salaš with the name of this family. Today it is the DDOR insurance company building. It is in good condition, since it was reconstructed at the beginning of the 21st century, but some new reconstructions and mending are needed on the building.

This project was supported by the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia.