Holistic Heritage

The popularity of the Schindler Factory – a branch of the Museum of Kraków – which opened 15 years ago, has since led to the creation of a new museum at the nearby KL Plaszow concentration camp. The Schindler Factory is a part of the Museum of Kraków, and displays a narrative of Kraków life during World War II under Nazi German occupation. The new KL Plaszow museum, set to open its doors to the pu...

For this episode of Heritage Hour we are in Nowa Huta, an industrial city which was built as a workers’ neighbourhood in the socialist-realist style in the late 1940s, acting as a proletarian counterweight to the seemingly snobbish and intellectual city of Kraków. Over seven decades later, and Nowa Huta’s sprawling steelworks have all but disappeared, the district is one of the greenest in Kraków,...

Is sound heritage? Sound is inherent to every building, every object. A wind which whistles its way through a church door, the bustle of people on a market square, the echo inside a church or even farm machinery harvesting the year's crops... And yet, we still rarely think about sound as part of heritage. For this episode of Holistic Heritage, hosts John Beauchamp and Dr Katarzyna Jagodzińska are...

The implementation of new architecture in World Heritage City Areas is a challenge. What is allowed and what needs to be negotiated? What is the range and limit of these negotiations? Isn’t it better to build new somewhere else, leaving protected areas as they are? In October 2025, on the occasion of the conference of the Organisation of the World Heritage Cities of the Central and Eastern Europea...

The Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum , located on a peninsula on the Danube in the vicinity of the Slovak capital of Bratislava, is one of the most stunning places created specifically for modern and contemporary art in Central Europe in the 21st century. It was founded thanks to the determination of art dealer Vincent Polakovič and the involvement of Dutch investor Gerard Meulensteen. The buildin...

For this episode of On The Road, we are in the Bulgarian Valley of the Roses and the town of Kazanlak to find out more about rose production. John Beauchamp and Katarzyna Jagodzińska visit Kazanlak, where they meet Denitsa Barekova from the Rose Museum in Kazanlak, who explains the history of roses in the area and the traditional methods used to make coveted rose oil and other rose-related product...

An ensemble of sculptures in the Romanian city of Târgu Jiu by renowned artist Constantin Brâncuși is now on the UNESCO Heritage List. For this episode of Holistic Heritage, John Beauchamp and Dr Katarzyna Jagodzińska are in Târgu Jiu, where they take a look at the Brâncuși sculptures : the Table of Silence, Gate of the Kiss and perhaps the best known sculpture of the ensemble, the Endless Column....

Muzeum Sztuki (literally “Art Museum” in Polish) is one of the first contemporary art museums in the world, and was conceived by renowned artist Władysław Strzemiński and created thank to the grassroots collection of art pieces from leading artists connected to Paris at that time. Over decades the museum expanded, occupying three buildings connected to the textile industry which built the wealth a...

For this episode of Holistic Heritage, we meet the team at the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub for Central and Eastern Europe and take a look back at the first few years of the Kraków Hub and its activities. Hosted by John Beauchamp and Dr Katarzyna Jagodzińska , Head of the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków. Also featured in the episode are Deputy Head of the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków, D...

In this edition of Holistic Heritage, we speak to three heritage practitioners in Poland’s southern city of Kraków and what makes this city so special in terms of creating and running cultural heritage projects. Join hosts John Beauchamp and Dr Katarzyna Jagodzińska , Head of the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków, as they speak to Katarzyna Sosenko , an art historian and Chair of the Sosenko Fa...

Over the past couple of years, the research team at the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków has been busy on creating a report on the non-governmental heritage sector in Central and Eastern Europe. “Mapping of the Central and Eastern European Non-Governmental Heritage Sector: Report” was published in June 2025 and penned by researchers at the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków in collaboration...

In this edition of Holistic Heritage, we are both in Kraków and further afield for the Małopolska Culture Heritage Days 2025, run by the  Małopolska Cultural Institute , which this year  won a European Heritage Award / Europa Nostra Award in the Citizens Engagement and Awareness-raising category. In the episode, join John Beauchamp and head of the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub, Dr Katarzyna Jagodzińs...

What is a post-museum? Is museum participation really all that it’s geared up to be? How can museums – seen as gatekeepers of knowledge – really open up their collections and programming to the public? Or maybe they shouldn’t? “In the book I show that museums are overusing the word participation, that they're inviting people to do collaborate and contribute while keeping their authoritarian positi...

The latest mapping of the heritage NGO sector in Central and Eastern Europe , conducted by the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków (to be published in June 2025), has shown that heritage practitioners and others working in the sector often suffer from stress and burnout. This is of course a wider trend across society.  How can we slow down and find our balance? Can heritage be the answer?  We ask...

Over recent decades, a lot of industry in the region of Silesia has shut down. While some plants and factories have been demolished, others have stood the test of time and are still standing, albeit having been adapted to completely new functions, such as museums, art galleries, restaurants, cafes, hotels, and as headquarters of various companies. Usually these buildings were in need of change, be...

In this inaugural episode of Heritage Hour, we speak to leading experts on the preservation of Jewish heritage in Poland. We hear about the synagogue in Orla, in eastern Poland, and its submission to the 7 Most Endangered Programme  run by Europa Nostra. What is special about the synagogue in Orla and why was it important to include it in the 7ME programme? Are there any other synagogues eligible?...

The bare concrete structure of a decommissioned power plant, part of the Arsenał Gallery in Białystok in north-eastern Poland, is the home to an exhibition by Augustas Serapinas , a Vilnius-based artist who is putting a spotlight on the plight of regional wooden architecture. For the exhibition, Serapinas has deconstructed three wooden buildings, which have all been decommissioned, from the Podlas...

Dan Perjovschi is a Romanian artist, writer and journalist whose simple cartoon-like drawings provoke and appeal to audiences the world over. His work is politically and socially engaging, and his exhibitions – which he usually “installs” himself by painting directly onto museum walls – are extremely popular, with shows being held at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, MoMa in New York, as well as a who...

It’s the first Thursday in December, and in the southern Polish city of Kraków a number of people have gathered around the Adam Mickiewicz monument on the Main Market Square for the annual nativity scene competition. Cracovian nativity scenes, or szopki, have been a regular fixture in the city since the 19th century, and since 1937 a competition has been running for the best-made cribs. But these...

Following our visit to the Tășuleasa Social and hiking a part of the Via Transilvanica (you can hear more in our episode on the Via Transilvanica here ), we decide to carry on our journey through Romania and Bulgaria by taking in a few heritage sites.  Our first destination is the village of Viscri , an old Saxon village which is home to a fortified church, one of seven Villages with Fortified Chu...

Head of the Kraków Heritage Hub Katarzyna Jagodzińska speaks to Tamas Fejerdy , a long-standing expert on cultural heritage and president of the Hungarian ICOMOS national committee. Tamas Fejerdy is a treasure trove of knowledge about monuments and heritage, both in Hungary and across Europe. We speak broadly on today’s challenges of heritage protection in Hungary, matters of authenticity, the rol...

Estonia is on the front line with regards to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Being in such a position has forced decision makers to rethink official policy in times of war. How to protect tangible cultural heritage? How to tackle the country’s dissonant Soviet heritage? With the invasion of Ukraine, what measures has Estonia put in place so far and what good practices in general can the rest of E...

Oleksandra Kovalchuk is the deputy director of the Fine Arts Museum in Odesa as well as the co-founder of the Museum For Change NGO, which actively seeks and supports cultural institutions in Ukraine in preserving their collections and assisting in ongoing operations. Head of the Kraków Heritage Hub, Katarzyna Jagodzińska met with Oleksandra Kovalchuk at the International Cultural Centre in Septem...

In the latest podcast in the Holistic Heritage series, the Kraków Heritage Hub’s John Beauchamp is in Bucharest for the 2024 European Cultural Heritage Summit, where he takes a closer look at the European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards. Since 2002, the awards have championed the best cultural heritage initiatives from across Europe, with a total of just under 4,000 entries from as many as...

Coming up in this episode, we go up to Lithuania to find out the activities undertaken in Kaunas following the city’s remarkable success as European Capital of Culture in 2022 and its inscription to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2023. During a meeting in Kraków, head of the Heritage Hub Katarzyna Jagodzińska speaks to researcher and architectural historian Vaidas Petrulis from the Kaunas Unive...