Monuments In Poland Research Articles

Protection of historical monuments in Poland and property tax regulations

The aim of this study is to analyse the tax exemptions that make the Polish tax system easier for owners of immovable monuments in terms of property tax. The authors attempt to determine whether Polish property tax regulations can indirectly contribute to the improvement of the condition of immovable monuments. This is an important issue, as even the most perfect conventions and laws cannot protect monuments from destruction; for this, financial resources are necessary. As can be seen from the dogmatic and legal analysis, the solutions concerning tax exemptions for historic properties should be assessed as being far from sufficient to serve as effective financial and legal incentives for owners to care for the preservation of historic buildings. In this respect, the authors postulate making changes related to the extension of the existing exemption. In this article, the dogmatic-legal method based on the analysis of the texts of legal acts has been applied, as has the empirical method in terms of determining the number of immovable monuments in Poland.

Public Funds as a Source of Financing Revalorization of Sacral Historical Monuments: The Example of Poland

Public Funds as a Source of Financing Revalorization of Sacral Historical Monuments: The Example of Poland

Selected aspects of monuments protection in Poland in the inter war period

The article concerns research on the history of the conservation of architectural monuments in Poland in the interwar period. A comparison of the first post-independence resolutions covering the protection of Polish monuments shows that the content of the provisions is based on the findings and assumptions developed while the partitions were still in progress. Undoubtedly, the work of societies and conservationist groups, for the purpose of popularizing knowledge about historical objects and making the public aware of the need to undertake conservation activities, became the foundation for the organization of future conservation services.
 The article presents an analysis of the process of forming Polish conservation structures in the independent state and presents the methods of work of district conservators adopted at that time. This paper pays attention to the attitude of the clergy, scientific circles and the general public to the formed concept of conservation. It should be emphasized that many of the organizational assumptions and legal regulations of the time have influenced the practice and methods of contemporary conservators today.

Mechanizm dotacyjny jako podstawowy mechanizm pomocniczości w polityce opieki nad zabytkami nieruchomymi w Polsce po wejściu do Unii Europejskiej

The article presents the mechanism of targeted grant in the system of policy of care for immovable monuments in Poland as a tool of policy, the architecture of which is based on the principles of superposition and subsidiarity. This mechanism is a tool to eliminate the inefficiencies, shortcomings and weaknesses of the policy systems built on these two principles. The article presents its local, national and European dimension. In the first part, the article introduces the principles of superposition and subsidiarity. Next, it discusses the issue of targeted subsidies for investments in immovable monuments from the central budget of the Republic of Poland, local budgets, the European Union, as well as the Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area and the Norwegian Financial Mechanism. Author’s indicators were also presented, i.e. the Quantitative Financial Subsidiarity Index (QFSI ) and the Valuable Financial Subsidiarity Index (VFSI ). The summary indicates recommendations in response to the identified areas where the subsidy mechanism does not work properly.

Przyrodnicze i społeczne aspekty wandalizmu podpaleń drzew pomnikowych

The article analyses cases of arson attacks on trees – natural monuments in Poland in terms of their social and natural losses over a period of almost 100 years (1925-2021), with the incidents recorded mainly in the second decade of the 21st century. The loss in the natural aspect is related to the species structure of the trees set on fire (only deciduous species), age (the reported minimum age was about 300 years), dimensions (the reported circumference range was from about 460 cm to about 1050 cm) and biocenotic value (hollows, decay, habitat for protected animal species). Some of the trees set on fire were exceptional in respect of nature terms on a national or even international scale (the Chrobry Oak, the Mieszko I Oak and the Napoleon Oak). The loss, in social aspect, results from the loss in the value of the monumental trees in terms of tourism and recreation, history, culture, emotions and education. However, the analysed websites lacked references to the undoubted value of these trees in the scientific aspect. The presented problem of arson attacks on monumental trees and the resulting considerable natural and social losses requires that legal and organisational steps be taken as soon as possible in order to reduce or eliminate the discussed threat in the future.

Selected areas and results of the activities of the National Institute of Cultural Heritage for the protection and care of monuments in the years 2015-2019

In the article, the subject of considerations is the effects of actions of the National Institute of Cultural Heritage in selected areas of monument protection and care in the years 2015-2019. The undertaken subject corresponds to the protection of cultural heritage in the context of strengthening the cultural security of the Republic of Poland. The purpose of the considerations is to present the results of the activities of the National Institute of Cultural Heritage in the system of protection and care of monuments in Poland, in the years 2015-2019, taking into account selected areas of task implementation by the cultural institution under study. The analysis is based on statistical data published by the National Institute of Cultural Heritage (hereinafter referred to as NID) in periodic and annual reports on the activities of the institution, in additional reports, as well as on scientific literature on the protection and care of historical monuments. In the article, it was established that NID has carried out numerous activities for the protection and care of monuments, and thus the protection of cultural heritage in the context of strengthening the cultural security of the Republic of Poland. The main areas of activities of NID concerned maintaining records and documentation of monuments, monitoring and counteracting threats to cultural heritage, as well as performance of training and information tasks. Opinions and expertise issued for public administration bodies and the implementation of programmes for the protection and care of monuments were important.

Red Army monuments in Poland from creation to destruction

Red Army monuments in Poland from creation to destruction

The Imperial Theme in Art and Architecture of the Polish Vasas

This essay reconsiders two of the most famous monuments in Poland, the Warsaw Castle and the Sigismund Column. It argues that both evoke imperial themes, with reference to a model provided by the Habsburgs for both the architecture and the sculpture, but present them in ways that specifically express the ambitions of the Vasa dynasty.

ГРАФІЧНА РЕКОНСТРУКЦІЯ ОБОРОННОГО ВАЛУ СЛОВ’ЯНСЬКОГО ГОРОДИЩА ІІІ У МІСТІ КОРОСТЕНЬ (ЗА АРХЕОЛОГІЧНИМИ ДАНИМИ)

ГРАФІЧНА РЕКОНСТРУКЦІЯ ОБОРОННОГО ВАЛУ СЛОВ’ЯНСЬКОГО ГОРОДИЩА ІІІ У МІСТІ КОРОСТЕНЬ (ЗА АРХЕОЛОГІЧНИМИ ДАНИМИ)

Entry in the register of monuments as a form of administrative and legal protection of cultural heritage in Poland – legal and practical aspects

The aim of the article is to characterize entry in the register of monuments as a statutory form of administrative and legal protection of monuments in Poland and to identify regional disparities (differences) in the practice of implementation of entry in the register of monuments in provinces, as at the end of June 2018. The thesis was put forward that entry in the register of monuments is an important way of protecting cultural assets in Poland after 2003, while the practice of use of the identified administrative and legal form of monument protection may testify to the particularly rich historical stock of some Polish provinces. Entry in the register of monuments is a necessary administrative and legal measure for protection of monuments in a democratic state that takes care of the development of cultural resources. The condition of culture depends largely on protection of monuments. Monuments in Poland are characterized by significant diversity in terms of geographical distribution and costs of their protection.

Watermills and windmills as monuments in Poland - protection of cultural heritage in situ and in open-air museums

This paper presents the results of research on the history of the protection of mills as objects of cultural heritage on Polish lands. First, the spatial distribution of over 20,000 mills at the beginning of the previous century is characterized, then the main actions undertaken for their protection in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are discussed. Merely 3.4% of mills that worked in the past are now protected as monuments and recorded in the national register. Most of them remain in their original locations (in situ), and another 71 windmills and 22 watermills have been relocated to open-air museums. These specific institutions face a particularly important task involving the necessity to retain the original functionality of the mills.

Obraz Polski w rosyjskiej telewizji

The aim of the article is to analyze the image of Poland on Russian state television in the context of the introduction of a new decommunization law in Poland. The subjects of qualitative analysis are Russian information and journalistic programs devoted to the demolition of Soviet soldiers‘ monuments in Poland. The author hypothesizes about a change in the provision of information and sharpening media narrative. The application of the content analysis of the presenters and guests‘ statements made it possible to obtain an answer on Poland‘s image and current level of political and social talk shows. Selected programs deal not only with the demolition of monuments to Soviet soldiers but are also devoted to current Russian-Polish political relations. The conclusions that can be drawn from the analysis of the programs indicate a significant increase in anti-Polish sentiments, intensified by the leading journalists. Political talk show programs spread a negative and biased picture of Poland in Russian society.

Stan badań nad dokumentacją zabytków powiatu bielskiego

This paper constitutes a critical analysis of a two-volume publication: Katalog zabytków sztuki. Województwo podlaskie (białostockie). Powiat bielski [A Catalogue of Artistic Monuments. Podlaskie (Białystok) Voivodeship. Bielsk County], published in a series “A Catalogue of Artistic Monuments in Poland” by the Institute of Art at the Polish Academy of Sciences. The author of this article presents the contents of the Catalogue and evaluates its usefulness for further, detailed research on regional history. He draws attention to a high substantive level of the reviewed work which was based on rich source material acquired by means of queries conducted in the Polish archives (e.g., State Archives in Białystok), foreign ones (Russian State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg), and other cultural institutions (e.g. Voivodship Office for the Protection of Historical Monuments in Białystok). The Catalogue also uses data from numerous scientific monographs, articles, and elaborations containing over 300 references. One of its assets, apart from the scientific content, is high editorial quality. The Catalogue presents rich illustrative material provided with detailed descriptions in the form of historical outlines of seventy-two settlements with the characteristics of included monuments, depicted in 1,427 colourful photographs. The author expands information on some of the monuments described in the Catalogue using archive materials stored in the National Archives in Białystok. These are e.g.: 20th-century photographs showing the town hall in Bielsk Podlaski and archival files on the technical condition of the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary from Mt. Carmel in Bielsk Podlaski after the First World War. The potential reader of the discussed review article is offered a synthesis of the Catalogue’s contents. It also highlights its scientific usefulness for art historians and regionalists.

Main issues related to the protection of historic real estate: topic outline

The aim of the article is on the one hand to indicate and briefly characterise the main – although for obvious reasons not all – problems concerning the protection of historical monuments in Poland in general, and real estate monuments in particular, against the background of the general description of the cultural heritage protection law. These problems are already present when trying to define the object of protection; they are substantially related to the issue of social interest (often referred to as public interest or common interest) and come out in full light, in the process of applying the law, when dealing with the issue of too wide a scope of discretionary power of the historic monuments protection authority. On the other hand, and even more importantly, the aim here is to indicate the problems that must be taken into account when planning the necessary changes to the law on the protection of historical monuments, first of all the Act on the Protection and Care of Historical Monuments of 23 July 2003, which is often referred to as the „constitution for the protection of historical monuments in Poland”. Lack of reaction to negative events, including undertaking appropriate legislative actions, but also those aimed at improving the quality of law application by institutions for the protection of historical monuments, will often lead to irreversible and irreparable changes in the Polish national heritage.

Pomniki Historii – forma ochrony, forma promocji, forma zarządzania?

Pomniki Historii to zbiór ponad 100 najcenniejszych zabytków w Polsce. Jednocześnie Pomniki Historii to jedna z 5 form ochrony zabytków, określonych w polskim prawodawstwie. Te okoliczności sprawiają, że konieczna jest ocena funkcjonowania tej formy ochrony zabytków.
 Wiele elementów w koncepcji Pomników Historii, procedurze ich nominowania, oraz merytorycznej ocenie jest przejętych z systemu Światowego Dziedzictwa UNESCO. Dlatego też ten system możne być punktem odniesienia do oceny funkcjonowania Pomników Historii. Jednocześnie w oparciu o to porównanie można wskazać kierunki doskonalenia funkcjonowania Pomników Historii.
 W artykule omówiono zasadnicze aspekty funkcjonowania Pomników Historii – m.in. miejsce i rolę Pomników Historii w polskim systemie ochrony zabytków, procedury nominowania, procedurę oceny, relację Pomników Historii z dobrami Światowego Dziedzictwa UNESCO.

Zarządzanie pomnikami historii

System ochrony zabytków w Polsce, w tym pomników historii nie jest w pełni dostosowany do zmian ustrojowych po 1989 roku. Niedocenianym, istotnym elementem tego systemu determinującym skuteczną ochronę jest profesjonalne zarządzanie architektonicznym dziedzictwem łączące konserwację ze współczesnym użytkowaniem historycznych obiektów. Współzależności konserwatorskich i pozakonserwatorskich uwarunkowań wymuszają dziś postrzeganie ochrony zabytków jako złożonego i interdyscyplinarnego procesu – skorelowanych ze sobą oddziaływań na zabytkowy obiekt, w którym zabiegi konserwatorskie są kluczową, ale nie jedyną działalnością. Całością organizacyjną tych działań jest zarządzanie. Pomniki historii jako najcenniejsze dziedzictwo powinny być wzorem zarządzania dla krajowego, zabytkowego zasobu. Piętnastoletnie doświadczenia pomnika Twierdza Srebrna Góra pozwalają przybliżyć cele i złożone uwarunkowania powiązanych ze sobą działań zarządczych oraz wnioski adresowane do władz krajowych odpowiedzialnych za ochronę kulturowego dziedzictwa.

Use of GIS Tools in Sustainable Heritage Management—The Importance of Data Generalization in Spatial Modeling

Cultural heritage is a very important element affecting the sustainable development. To analyze the various forms of spatial management inscribed into sustainable development, information on the location of objects and their concentration at specific areas is necessary. The main goal of the article was to show the possibility of using various GIS tools in modeling the distribution of historical objects. For spatial analysis, it is optimal to use the point location of objects. Often, however, it is extremely difficult, laborious, expensive, and sometimes impossible to obtain. Thus, various map content generalizations were analyzed in the article; the main goal was to find the level for which the data with an acceptable loss of accuracy can be generalized. Such analyses can be extremely useful in sustainable heritage management. Article also shows how cultural heritage fits into the sustainable heritage management. The research included non-movable monuments in Poland. The obtained results showed the universality of this type of research both in the thematic sense (can be used for various types of objects) and spatial sense (can be performed locally, at the country level, or even at the continental level).

Paranoid looking: on de-communization

According to the famous statement by Robert Musil, ‘there is nothing in this world as invisible as monuments, attention runs down them without stopping for a moment.’ However, the moment when they suddenly become visible as the centre of intense social conflicts, it is difficult to believe they had been invisible for so long. This article analyses practices of contemporary iconoclastic gestures directed at monuments, examining the differences between recent iconoclastic acts in the United States and in Poland. Contrary to progressive anti-racist iconoclastic practices in the United States, the authors argue that the recent wave of attacks against monuments in Poland, connected to the state-sanctioned politics of ‘de-communization’, derives from a conservative vision of history and the public sphere. Drawing on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s concept of ‘paranoid reading’, the authors show how the ‘de-communization’ project activates a particular ‘way of seeing’: paranoid looking, through which public spaces are turned into environments filled with objects that need to be suspiciously examined and assessed. The paranoid look works against the invisibility of monuments, aiming to extract objects from the landscape in order to further examine them in search of any suspicious elements – formal and stylistic features, more or less intelligible symbols and so on that will shed light on their under-acknowledged capacity for both culpability and criticality.

Application of GIS tools in spatial distribution modeling of historical monuments

Entry in the register of objects of cultural heritage (Polish: rejestr zabytków) is one of the statutory forms of legal protection of monuments in Poland. The registers of objects of cultural heritage are maintained by territorially competent voivodeship conservators of monuments. Voivodeship registers of objects of cultural heritage contain approx. 76,000 entries related to non-movable monuments that are differentiated by type. These objects can be cultural landscapes, urban and rural systems, construction units, works of architecture and con-struction, defensive structures, monuments of technology, cemeteries, parks, gardens, and other forms of designed greenery as well as places that commemorate historical events or the activities of outstanding figures on institutions.In this paper, research was conducted on the possibilities of using GIS tools in analyses regarding the spatial distribution of historical monuments in Poland. Data from the National Heritage Board of Poland (Polish: Narodowy Instytut Dziedzictwa) obtained from the dane.gov.pl website was analyzed. Maps showing the density of non-movable monuments specifying their types and locations were created. Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship was an area of detailed research. The generated maps can be used for creating and updating the national spatial development concept (Polish: koncepcja przestrzennego zagospodarowania kraju) as well as voivodeship spatial management plans.

Czy Polakom potrzebne są zabytki? Kilka słów o niszczeniu zabytków nieruchomych w Polsce

Czy Polakom potrzebne są zabytki? Kilka słów o niszczeniu zabytków nieruchomych w Polsce