Villa Rost in Bielsko-Biała, Historic villa in Bielsko-Biała, Poland

Villa Rost is a one-story corner town palace at the intersection of Komorowicka and Towarzystwa Szkoły Ludowej streets, built in 1903 to Emanuel Rost junior's own design. Its neo-Rococo facade carries herms, vases, full-figure sculptures, cartouches, masks, shell and scale ornament, and the coats of arms of Biała. Two helmet-shaped domes rise above the mansard roof, and a landscape garden with pines, beeches, chestnuts and a plane tree adjoins the south side.

Emanuel Rost junior, a Bielsko architect who also designed the town hall and the Pod Żabami house, built this villa in 1903 to his own design as his home and office. His family kept it until the end of World War II. Nationalized on 11 April 1945, it housed a boarding school for the Polish Pedagogical Lyceum, later a vocational school and an economics lyceum. In 1979 it passed to the Pedagogical Library, which moved in after renovation in January 1980.

The building's name comes from Emanuel Rost junior, the Bielsko architect who designed it as his own home and office; his family kept it until the end of World War II. Inside, most original interiors survive in Art Nouveau style, including a Japanese room with dark green tiles and real bamboo, a ballroom, and a former chapel panelled in various woods with an inlaid view of Biała and the Beskids.

The building stands at the corner of Komorowicka and Towarzystwa Szkoły Ludowej streets, and since 1980 it has housed the Pedagogical Provincial Library, which occupies the ground floor while the upper floor was long shared with a teacher-training centre. The library has been the sole user since 2015, when the WOM centre moved to Legionów 25. A landscape garden with pines, beeches, chestnuts and a plane tree, planted between 1910 and 1935, adjoins the south side.

The former chapel is lined entirely in different woods; its inlaid panelling shows a view of Biała around 1900 with the Beskids behind, and a corner fireplace bears Goethe's line "Edel sei der Mensch, hilfreich und gut". The so-called Japanese room, once an orangery, keeps dark green tiles and real bamboo poles.