Villa Aurora, the historic artist residency at 520 Paseo Miramar in Pacific Palisades, will welcome the public back on Sunday, Aug. 30, with an open house marking the end of a 19-month closure forced by the January 2025 Palisades Fire. Residents will again be able to tour the landmark home, its 22,000-volume library and its restored gardens.

The reopening also restarts Villa Aurora's fellowship program for German-based writers, visual artists, composers and filmmakers, according to the organization's official announcement. Fellows and visitors will return to the estate starting at the end of August.

Director Claudia Gordon said in a July 2 statement that the support Villa Aurora received in both Germany and the United States carried the institution through the difficult months after the fire, and that staff are eager to fully resume work as a transatlantic cultural institution centered on the fellowship program.

The restoration, funded by Germany's Federal Foreign Office, included structural inspections, toxicological and geotechnical testing, smoke-damage removal from the interiors and extensive garden rehabilitation, according to the Daily News. Additional fire-prevention work on the grounds will continue while the residence operates.

Artifacts coming home

The reopening brings back cultural treasures evacuated during the fire, including a portrait of author Marta Feuchtwanger and an 18th-century Hebrew scroll of the Book of Esther. Both were safeguarded at the Wende Museum in Culver City during the closure.

On Jan. 7, 2025, as the fire raced through Pacific Palisades canyons, Gordon, two housekeepers, a handyman and Taylor Dwyer, curator of the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library at USC, rushed to secure the building. "Within half an hour, it was clear we had no choice but to evacuate. We dropped everything and left," Gordon recalled in an April 2025 Moment Magazine feature about the fire's impact on the estate.

Dwyer told the magazine the team grabbed roughly 11 pieces, including paintings, sculptures and the Esther scroll. The villa's gardens were scorched and the hillside behind the house turned black, but the 1928 Spanish Colonial Revival mansion remained standing.

A storied refuge

The 14-room, 6,700-square-foot home was purchased in 1943 for $9,000 by German-Jewish exiles Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger. It became a gathering place for émigrés fleeing Nazi persecution, hosting Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht and Charlie Chaplin, among others. The home is a designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument.

Since 1995, Villa Aurora has operated as an artists' residency, hosting approximately 300 fellows. The estate still houses a pipe organ built in 1928 by Artcraft Organ Company of Santa Monica.

During the closure, Villa Aurora kept part of its fellowship running off-campus, with fellows hosted by the Wende Museum, the Galka Scheyer House and the 18th Street Arts Center.

The Aug. 30 open house welcomes neighbors, supporters, partners and the general public to the estate. Fire-prevention landscaping work will continue on the grounds through the fall.