New president to live at Lumbe Villa

Prague, March 10 (CTK) - New Czech President Milos Zeman will live with his family during his mandate in the Lumbe Villa at the Stag Moat near Prague Castle, the presidential seat, he said on Prima Television's discussion programme yesterday.

His predecessor Vaclav Klaus stayed at the same place until recently.

Zeman said the villa was chosen also because he wants to live close to nature and his wife would like to have a dog.

Zeman, former Social Democrat (CSSD) prime minister, now honorary chairman of the Party of Citizens' Rights (SPOZ), won the first direct presidential election in January.

Klaus was Czech president for two five-year terms.

Zeman been spending most of his time in a countryside house in Nove Veseli, south Moravia, since he left politics in 2003. During his stays in Prague he used a flat in a prefab house on the outskirts of Prague.

The Lumbe villa is an Empire building that Prague surgeon Karel Lumbe had built in the mid-19th century.

At the beginning of the 20th it was inhabited by painter Milos Jiranek who painted untraditional views of Prague Castle from it.

The Presidential Office has owned the villa and surrounding land since 1925 and it was first used by the Castle administration.

Plans to reconstruct the villa started to be prepared in 1993 and in 2004 Klaus chose it as its seat. He and his wife moved to the villa spreading on some 200 square metres in the summer of 2005. Klaus left it last week.