EUROPEAN CULTURAL ROUTE OF RESIDENCES OF THE RADZIWIŁŁ FAMILY – HERITAGE PROTECTION AND PRESERVATION

ABSTRACT

The European Commission has announced that Year 2018 is the European Year of Cultural Heritage /EYCH/. The undertaken activities are to boost the awareness of citizens as well as governments in terms of the creation of collective memory and identity of Europeans. The Commission’s assumption is the “abolition of borders”, or stepping beyond the territory of a given state or region and getting to know cultural heritage as the common good, fostering social integration. 600 years of history of the Radziwiłłs, one of Europe’s greatest families, has become the grounds for deliberations devoted to methods of protecting its cultural heritage, scattered all over the European continent. Properties and residences of this family have survived to our times in different states of preservation. Their greatest architectural legacy is located in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, but also in Germany, France, and Italy. Residences of the Radziwiłłs as former assets of culture presented in this study are arranged according to the degree of their preservation. The five categories that have been identified: preserved structures, reconstructed structures, structures covered with revalorisation and partly reconstructed, structures remaining in ruin, and non-existent structures, comprise a collection of architectural structures belonging to one family. This peculiar map of Europe, according to the definition of cultural heritage should abolish the existing borders so that social and national integration could allow for common measures aiming to preserve relics of the past in the sphere of historical, architectural, and aesthetic values. Only a common European policy can secure appropriate protection of valuable monuments of architecture, which in the past constituted a value shared by Poland and Lithuania.

Keywords: cultural heritage, protection, residences of the Radziwiłł family