A re-positioning of post-industrial heritage in upper Silesia, Poland, into an integrated thematic tourist route

Abstract

ABSTRACT Cultural heritage tourism illustrated by tourists visiting post-industrial facilities became one of the ways to counteract the negative consequences of declining heavy industry at the end of the twentieth century. The initiation of tourist activity in post-industrial areas has also become an important justification for expenditure on the revitalization of objects that may constitute part of the cultural heritage of such regions. This article discusses the establishment and restructuring of an Industrial Monuments Route in Poland (IMR) as an example of the European thematic routes of industrial heritage tourism. The paper reviews the present re-development of tourist attractions in Upper Silesia based on features of the industrial heritage there, including both movable monuments in the form of machines used in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as fixed features such as underground mineshafts and mining galleries, a historic workers’ housing estate and a wooden radio station. The suggested refocusing of the IMR is part of the process of conserving the endangered regional identity of the Silesian population for future generations.