Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia

The Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia (IPCHS) was founded in 1999, under the then Cultural Heritage Protection Act, and united the 7 regional institutes for the protection of cultural heritage and the Restoration Centre. IPCH comprises the Cultural Heritage Service with 7 regional offices and the Conservation Centre with 2 organisational units – the Restoration Centre and the Centre for Preventive Archaeology. They perform public services in the area of the protection and conservation of immovable cultural heritage with the related movable and intangible heritage.

The photo gallery available at the institute's website is a rich resource on Slovene 20th-century architecture, Baroque monuments, Secessionist architecture in Slovenia, mediaeval towns, early industrial heritage, historical parks and gardens, the legacy of Jože Plečnik, and vernacular heritage as well as the latest archaeological findings.

Obnova Plečnikove hiše / Renovation of Plečnik’s house by Zavod za varstvo kulturne dediščine Slovenije on YouTube

History

The Slovenian territory, whether as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, can trace its history of conservation offices concerned with maintaining and restoring the territory's many monuments and buildings of cultural heritage all the way to 1850. More details of this history are revealed in the historical overview article about Slovenian cultural heritage and conservation.

In 2008 the Slovene government passed a new law on cultural heritage thus reorganising the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia as it is today.

Organisational structure

The IPCH comprises 2 main organisational units:

The Cultural Heritage Service (Služba za kulturno dediščino) consists of 7 regional offices of the IPCH located in Celje, Kranj, Ljubljana, Maribor, Nova Gorica, Novo mesto, Piran. A regional office in Murska Sobota is also planned.
The Conservation Centre (Center za konservatorstvo) comprises the Restoration Centre and the Centre for Preventive Archaeology.

CPA se predstavi / The CPA presents themselves by Zavod za varstvo kulturne dediščine Slovenije on YouTube

Mission and tasks

The IPCH is active in the areas of conservation and restoration. It brings together art historians, archaeologists, architects, ethnologists, landscape architects, historians, sculptors, painters and many other experts who work in the institute's various organisational units. The goal of the institute is to preserve and protect the cultural heritage of Slovenia, to raise the broader public's interest in cultural heritage, as well as to achieve a balance of cultural monuments of the past with the existing natural and cultural environment and new architectural achievements.

The institute has a variety of administrative and professional duties related to the protection of both immovable cultural heritage and the associated movable and intangible cultural heritage. Its domain is not only the numerous procedures linked to the direct conservation of heritage and the prevention of damage, but also the large number of measures aimed at incorporating heritage into modern life, presenting heritage to the general public and developing awareness of its value.

The maintenance of cultural heritage and the guidelines for work on built heritage or on archaeological field examinations are the main tasks of the IPCH. Prior to work being carried out on cultural heritage a specification of the conditions and a cultural heritage agreement must be obtained from the competent regional office of the IPCH. On the other hand a preliminary archaeological research is managed and carried out by the Centre for Preventive Archaeology of the institute.

The IPCH distributes information on the tenders of the Ministry of Culture related to immovable heritage, calls for subsidies and loans available for renovation, as well as offers consulting and case studies.

Register

Experts of the IPCH and its corresponding regional offices are responsible for providing recommendations and data to the Heritage Information and Documentation Centre at the Ministry of Culture which maintains the online Register of Immovable Cultural Heritage. The register is an official, computer-supported database of immovable cultural heritage in Slovenia under the responsibility of the state. All units of immovable cultural heritage are entered into the register regardless of their type, size, ownership and whether or not they are legally protected.

Publications

The institute devotes a great deal of attention to the promotion of cultural heritage in the form of lectures, guided tours of monuments, exhibitions, online presentations, pamphlets and the Spomeniškovarstveni razgledi publications series, as well as other forms of promotion that have become established in contemporary heritage protection.

Since 1948 the publication Journal for the Protection of Monuments [Varstvo spomenikov] has been issued, which is the foremost scientific publication of the institute. Other serial publications are Cultural and Natural Monuments of Slovenia [Kulturni in naravni spomeniki Slovenije], which is a series of guidebooks, and a richly illustrated Series on Highway Archaeology [SAAS - Zbirka arheologija na avtocestah Slovenije], available in pdf format and online (in Slovenian). IPCH also publishes the DECH Series, annual anthologies related to the European Heritage Days [Zborniki DEKD], and the Vestnik Journal.

The Institute's e-Library is available online (see the links below).

International cooperation

Culthex is an important cross-border project (2009–2012) within the European territorial cooperation. Slovenian Gorenjska and Austrian Carinthia cooperate in the field of cultural heritage in order to establish a network of experts from different fields to help the owners of the heritage. The partners of the project include the Office of the Carinthian Government, Section 20, Planning, Klagenfurt; the Business Support Centre (BSC) Ltd, Kranj, and the municipalities of Bled, Radovljica, Tržič, and Gorenja vas–Poljane.

IPCH is also involved in the CARARE, PArSJAD, CEC, REVITAS, Shared Culture, Pearls of our Cultural Landscape [Biseri naše kulturne krajine], and TrArS (Tracing the Art of the Straub Family) international projects.

In 2009 the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage signed a bilateral agreement on cooperation with the Smithsonian Institution, the largest institution in the cultural field in the USA as well as the largest museum complex and conservation centre in the world. The cooperation is focused on sharing common interests and knowledge and training new specialists.

Among the partners in the international cooperative project Identification of Wood and Dendrocronology are also the Metropolitan Museum of New York and the Smithsonian Institution.

In 2006 the institute also took part in the international project European Bridge for Sarajevo, which aimed at founding a Restoration Centre at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo.

European Heritage Days

In 1991 Slovenia, along with a number of other European countries and the Council of Europe, was one of the founders and initiators of the "Days of European Cultural Heritage" or "DECH" [Dnevi evropske kulturne dediščine (DEKD)]. Every September a series of events are organised in Slovenia. The DECH Series published by the IPCH includes 16 bilingual publications, among them Historical Parks and Gardens in Slovenia (1995), The Heritage of Monastic Order (1996), Art Nouveau Architecture in Slovenia (1998), Medieval Towns in Slovenia (1998), 20th Century: Slovene Architecture from Modernism to Contemporaneity (2001), Castles, Fortresses and City Walls (2006), and the most recent programmes dedicated to the architect Jože Plečnik (2007), and the father of written Slovenian language Primož Trubar (2008). The programme in 2009 was dedicated to the "Heritage, Creativity and Innovation", in 2010 to "Cultural Heritage and Prosperity", both followed by pan-European campaigns. In 2011 the common theme was Heritage Communities and Volunteering and in 2012 (the Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations) The Experience of Heritage. In 2013 the EHD was conceived under the motto A century of benefiting heritage, related to a centenary of the appointment of art historian France Stele to the position of the provincial conservationist of the Monument Office for Carniola in 1913.

With these events, the IPCH has been particularly successful in enhancing the image of cultural heritage promotion in Europe.

Days of European Cultural Heritage 2018 banner

External links

International projects

Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia

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