Villa Maria

Villa Maria spent two decades as a hotel for nurses, which feels like poetic justice for a building that started life in 1906 as a doctor’s personal mansion built directly across from his own hospital. The physician inscribed “VILLA MARIA” and the date into its rounded Art Nouveau facade, framed it with wrought-iron balconies blooming with floral motifs, and decorated the exterior with asymmetrical bands of colorful tile.

After World War II another doctor moved in, but by the 1960s the villa had been converted into dormitory-style lodging for hospital staff. Its bourgeois single-family grandeur was repurposed for the very people who kept the medical machine running. Today it houses multiple families in Reszel, a medieval town of Gothic castles and bishops’ palaces.

The villa was declared a monument in 1995, though much of its polychromatic splendor has faded. It sits waiting for renovation, having spent more than a century adapting to the needs of the town around it. From doctor’s mansion to nurses’ quarters to family apartments, Villa Maria has lived many lives without ever leaving its corner.