Carl Josef Bayer was an important Austrian chemist and inventor who bought a large area in our town and had a villa built in Rečica ob Paki, where he lived with his large family until his death in 1904. In 1887, the great inventor patented the basis for process for the extraction of aluminum, and five years later he patented the entire, definitively developed Bayer process for the extraction of bauxite, which is still considered the main industrial process for the extraction of aluminum and bauxite. The villa was built in 1879 in the historical style of bourgeois villas and is one of the most beautiful buildings of that era in the area. The central highlights of the villa are a round corner tower topped by a pointed roof tower and a partially covered green tuff entrance staircase. In it, the famous chemist was visited by many distinguished scientists from all over the world.
