Péter Szabó
1447-CUL-SZA-HU


Management of Mixed Cultural and Natural World Heritage Sites in East-Central Europe: A Case Study of Visegrád

Draft Research Paper



NB. As the final paper is intended to be a comparative as well as a case study for Visegrád, the present version cannot, by definition, be more than a reflection of the stage of the work I am in at the moment. This holds true in two respects. Firstly, I am continuously conducting research on Visegrád itself, which involves a number of repeated meetings with those involved in policy decisions at the site. Each individual meeting can – and often does – alter my understanding of the situation. Secondly, although I do have some knowledge of the Polish and Czech situation, I have not visited the chosen World Heritage sites yet, therefore true comparison in these cases is not possible at present. Also, at this stage of research, I am mainly focusing on the management of the cultural landscape and less on the built heritage, which is reflected in the disproportionate handling of these matters in the piece below. Some of the points are more elaborate, some are merely touched upon. The final work will treat all aspect in depth and will contain some more issues not included here.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: World Heritage and Management Plans
2. World Heritage in East-Central Europe
3. Management of WH Sites in EEC, Visegrád and Pilis: A Case-Study
a. Introduction to Visegrád and Pilis
b. The Historical Aspect
c. The Natural Aspect
d. Ownership
e. Management
f. Inter-Agency Relations
g. Finances
h. Visitor Management
4. Conclusions




1. Introduction: World Heritage and Management Plans

What is UNESCO World Heritage? According to the official definition, it is „cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity .”1  What it really is is a high prestige collection of those sites that each country values most. Being on the List has tremendous effects: allegedly one third of world tourism is directed to World Heritage sites. The List has a history of more than three decades, and has gone through many changes. As a sign of the ‘maturity’ of the system, managing inscribed and potential UNESCO World Heritage sites has recently become a topical issue.2  For many years after its foundation (1972), the World Heritage Convention was engaged in establishing and then balancing the list of sites, while, although the possibility of deletion from the list existed, what happened to the actual sites was of little concern in the overall mechanism of the Convention. Changes in this general attitude started in the 1980s, but it was as late as 1997 that the States Parties (those countries that have adhered to the Convention) agreed that they would provide Periodic Reports on the conditions of their sites and on the application of the World Heritage Convention.3

The compulsory Periodic Reports brought the question of management plans to the centre of attention. It has become clear that only those sites will be able to successfully keep up their standards that have well-designed management plans. A management plan, in any case, should also be necessary because the Periodic Reports need a baseline to which to compare the changes, positive or negative. The World Heritage Committee soon admitted that this problem needed consideration. It also realised two important factors. Firstly, that the earlier unregulated practice lead to many World Heritage Sites not having a management plan at all. In fact, even the very simple question whether a management plan was necessary before a property could be inscribed on the List was undecided. Secondly, that the problem of management plans was a policy issue that required decision by the World Heritage Committee.

The new policy of the World Heritage Convention is that all sites nominated for inclusion on the List must have management plans. In the exceptional other cases, a date must be supplied when the management plan will be available. This will apply also to those sites that are already on the List but lack management plans or traditional management. The Committee also recognised that there should exist examples and models of management plans of different sites to help the preparation of plans for other older and newer sites. The next session of the WH Committee (2004) will discuss a proposal for the preparation of guidance documents for the protection of WH properties that would supplement the Operational Guidelines. These could include management of certain types of properties and case-studies of best practices.

The present study forms part of the above general trend, and aims at analysing the current management practices of mixed cultural and natural World Heritage sites in East-Central Europe in order to help the preparation of a management plan for the tentative WH listed site of the Medieval Royal Seat and Parkland in Visegrád, Hungary.4

2. World Heritage in East-Central Europe

East-Central Europe may have many definitions, but for the present study it means four countries: Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary.5  These countries are fairly well-represented in the List: 12, 12, 5, and 8 sites, respectively. It is obvious that the size of the country and the number of sites are in no close relation: The small Czech Republic has as many sites as the vastly larger Poland. However, if one is interested in mixed cultural and natural sites, or cultural landscapes,6  the choices are not too wide. The Czech have one site: The Lednice-Valtice cultural landscape; Poland has two cultural landscapes that are really designed parkscapes and the famous Bialowieza forest; there is nothing in Slovakia; while, surprising as it may be, Hungary has three proper cultural landscapes on the List (Lake Fertő, Hortobágy, and Tokaj) and two cultural sites with a significant landscape component. In other words, Hungary pays much more attention to cultural landscapes (at least as far as the World Heritage is concerned) than any other country in the region.

On the Hungarian Tentative List of ten sites, there are three more cultural landscapes, the Medieval Royal Seat and Parkland in Visegrád being one of these. As the site may be nominated for inclusion into the World Heritage List in 2005 (this depends on far more factors that the present author can be accounted for), there is a need for an adequate management plan to be prepared. I have decided to study the two representative sites from East-Central Europe: Bialowieza forest in Poland/Belarus and the Lednice-Valtice cultural landscape in the Czech Republic. Given the common history of the East-Central European region, I hope to gain important insights from how these sites are managed and what kind of problems they face from everyday operations to broad legal concepts. I have also decided to study some English examples, for an entirely different reason. Management is universal, regardless of World Heritage status. England is certainly the best place in Europe for the management of cultural landscapes. Both the knowledge of the history of the landscape (which is crucial to proper management) and practical management are highly advanced, and, as opposed to other countries, attention is paid that information be made available to the public. Another significant reason for involving English examples is that Visegrád (and the surrounding parkland called Pilis) have close historical parallels in England. The whole problem of medieval Royal Forests (which will be discussed later) is best acknowledged and researched in this country.

3. Management of WH Sites in EEC, Visegrád and Pilis: A Case-Study

a. Introduction to Visegrád and Pilis

Pilis (this historical name includes what are nowadays called Pilis and Visegrádi mountains) is a cultural landscape. As such, its history was formed by three forces: nature (the community of plants and animals), authority (through some administrative form), and people living there. The focal point of the territory is Visegrád, where there are extensive remains of a medieval royal centre: a castle, a royal palace with its gardens, and a Franciscan friary.7

The Medieval Royal Seat and Parkland in Visegrád is one of the last European remains of a Royal Forest. Such a Forest was a territory set aside from common law and preserved for royal hunting (primarily of deer).8 This resulted in an unconscious policy towards what would be termed today as ‘nature conservation.’ At Visegrád, this policy has been continuous for a thousand years. Forests were also to express the sacred nature of royal power, therefore they often incorporated monastic houses or hermitages associated with the royal house. A Royal Forest includes built heritage – the royal residence, and natural heritage – the hunting ground. Royal rights were rarely exclusive, most Forests had common rights attached to them, therefore Forests evolved as exceptionally complicated systems with consequently intricate landscapes. All elements in such landscapes were of equal importance, which is why Royal Forests are extremely rarely preserved fully intact.

Visegrád is a significant cultural landscape in the above context. While the castles, palace, garden, Franciscan friary and National Park themselves do not – with the exception of the palace, which has the firsts products of Renaissance outside Italy – represent unique values, and are preserved in and restored to various conditions, their combination makes them an outstanding monument of the kind of landscape structure that was prevailing for half a millennium and created the richest cultural landscapes we know. What enhances the value of this group of landscape elements is that they were – by European standards – untouched until the nineteenth century, therefore their medieval features were corrupted by deterioration rather than early-modern restructuring.

In 2000, a World Heritage nomination was prepared for Visegrád, although the Hungarian State, after all, withdrew this application before actually handing it in. Nonetheless, the WH experts’ reports on the document are available. Visegrád was put on the Hungarian tentative list of WH Sites, and at present negotiations are held, in which the Hungarian WH Secretariat expressed its will to hand in a new version of Visegrád’s application in 2005. The proposed  core area consists of the royal palace and castle within the town of Visegrád together with the whole outer territory of the town encompassing ca. 3000 ha of woodland. The buffer zone is identical with the territory of the Pilis part of the Duna-Ipoly National Park.

b. The Historical Aspect

The essence of cultural landscapes is their historical development. Without understanding how they evolved, it is impossible to manage them properly. In other words, first we must understand what we have, and only then can we start thinking about what we should do with it. This, however, is not a simple task to achieve. Landscapes are far more difficult subjects than buildings, for example. Not only do they involve the activities of civilisations long gone and civilisations that did not care to write, but they also incorporate the workings of nature, which, at the moment, are understood only superficially. The study of the combination of human and natural activities has a rather short history,9  and the future of the world’s cultural landscapes depends on how quickly advances are made in this field, and how quickly the knowledge thus acquired is put into policy practice and practical management.

According to a widely accepted theory - which nonetheless explains the dimly-lit beginnings of Hungarian history, and therefore will never be aptly proven – around the year 1000, when the Kingdom of Hungary was formed, uninhabited and lordless lands went into the possession of the king. Pilis was one of these, and until the end of the Middle Ages the sources talk about it as „the king’s own Forest”.10  Initially, this more or less wooded area was a royal hunting ground, several hunting lodges were built to serve the needs of the royal family and their friends. The king himself hunted sometimes in person, yet if it was for venison, he mostly relied on the people called „erdőóvó” (Forest-guard). Then, in the thirteenth century, alongside with the changes that transformed the whole kingdom, this system was also altered. As more and more land went out of royal possession, Pilis, which had been regarded as an oversized private estate, achieved a proper administrative form, and became one of the counties of the kingdom. This county, however, was different from other ones due to the fact that it was mainly wooded: certain characteristics of ordinary counties were entirely missing, certain people (such as the Forest-guards) replaced ordinary folks. A Royal Forest, as it was mentioned in medieval sources, is not to be imagined as an oversized wood: it certainly had more tree than the neighbouring regions, but it was an administrative unit, not a biological one.

The transformation of the royal estate into the Royal Forest went parallel with the transformation of the hunting lodges into monastic houses. This is a speciality of Pilis: there were four monasteries within the Forest: three Pauline (Szentlászló, Szentlélek, Szentkereszt) and a Cistercian (near Kesztölc). Pilis provided them with the most suitable location possible: secluded from the mundane world, yet within a day’s walk from the most important centres of the kingdom: Buda, Visegrád, Esztergom, or Fehérvár. The Paulines are especially interesting in the respect that this order is the only Hungarian-founded monastic movement, which, as far as they their knowledge went, sought its origins in Pilis Forest.

Another event of the highest significance in the history of Pilis was the construction of the castle of Visegrád in the mid-thirteenth century. There had been a castle in Visegrád before, built upon the ruins of a Roman fortress on Sibrik-hill,11  the focal place of the ancient Co. Visegrád. This fell from use by the early 1200s, for the county centre moved to Esztergom. While hunting residences gradually became out-of-date and the Forest was in need of some new function, Queen Mary (wife of King Béla IV) apparently driven by her own ideas, started to build a castle above the old fortress, financed by selling her own jewels. The new castle was at least partly ready by 1251.

The settlement system of the area also reflects this basic development pattern, yet has its own peculiarities. Today one will find relatively few nucleated villages with high population where there used to be many more smaller settlements. We know of one hundred medieval settlements, thirty-seven of which has its name preserved in documents. The smaller ones without known names are characteristic of the Árpádian age (1000-1301), they represent an age when there was constant tension between royal rights and settlements encroaching upon royal land. In the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries, there existed about thirty larger villages. It is remarkable that the boundary of the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve preserves the boundary of the Royal Forest almost intact, as can be worked out from the settlement system: namely the Royal Forest was most probably the territory surrounded by the settlements.

This system was dramatically altered by the Ottoman occupation of the area in the mid-sixteenth century. Not only did the monasteries disappear, but the whole settlement structure was also demolished (all but four settlements were depopulated for some time at least). When the kingdom was liberated in the late seventeenth century, Pilis was practically empty. New settlers had to be brought mainly from the Slovak regions, though for example Szentendre still preserves some of its Serb population and culture. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Pilis was partly royal possession, and partly private holding of magnates and that of the monastic orders that reappeared after the Ottomans had gone. Most of the wood in this period went to supply the Habsburg garrison in Pest-Buda. In the twentieth century Pilis is taken care of by the state, through the Pilis Parkforestry and, more recently, the Duna-Ipoly National Park.

c. The Natural Aspect

In close connection with the historical development outlined above, Visegrád and Pilis preserve many rare and interesting aspects of wildlife. In consequence, they are part of the Duna-Ipoly National Park, formed in 1997. Pilis is also one of the UNESCO Biosphere Reserves since 1981.12  There are two core-areas of the Biosphere Reserve in the proposed World Heritage area and further eight in the buffer zone. In the recently established Forest-Reserve Programme of the Nature Conservation Authority of the Ministry for Environment, the buffer zone features two reserves: Pilis-peak and Prédikálószék, the latter of which has a common boundary with the core area of the proposed World Heritage site.13  Rare plants and animals in the region range from Linum dolomiticum, a small and fragile plant, which is not found anywhere else in the world, through Ferula sadleriana on top of Pilis-peak, which grows in altogether six places in Europe, to the more familiar Pulsatilla grandis, red and roe deer and wild swine.

d. Ownership

Research carried out so far has demonstrated that ownership is a crucial question in the effective management of sites. It is essential that the ownership of any given place is free of complications. This is an especially burning issue in East-Central Europe, where fifteen years ago the old system of land-ownership was swept away together with communism. In Hungary, for example, a firm and working order of land ownership has yet to be established through processes that change ever so often. Visegrád is a good example of this.

When designating the core area for the 2000 application (which I was taking part in), we tried to include only such territories that should present no problems as far as ownership is concerned. This lead to a practical, if somewhat arbitrary solution: in addition to the royal monuments in the town of Visegrád itself, we decided to include only the lands within the boundaries of Visegrád. As this would have been difficult to explain in any other than strictly materialistic terms, the proposed buffer zone included the whole of the Pilis part of the National Park. This structure still seems reasonable today. Is it as simple as it seems? I shall give one detailed example to illustrate the problem. 14

The woodland that belongs to the core area seems to be the property of the Pilis Parkforestry, Ltd. In fact, however, it is state owned, through the Treasury Property Directorate (Kincstári Vagyonigazgatóság). The Parkforestry only manages the area. Being a limited company, however, the Parkforestry is a legal body in its own right. This matters far more than it might seem at the first sight. The Parkforestry is taken to have a different legal position in different cases. When approaching one of the largest pools of money available in Hungary: state funding, the Parkforestry is understood as a state owned institution, and is ruled out in the first round for being ineligible.

On other occasions, however, the Parkforestry acts as a perfectly normal legal body. A very strange example of this is the upper castle at Visegrád. The royal castle at Visegrád has two parts, the lower one properly belongs to the local museum, but the upper one, for one reason or another, is the property of the Parkforestry. Here property is understood literally. The upper castle is not state owned and managed by the Parkforestry but simply belongs to it. In effect, the Parkforestry, which originally has to do with trees, does not „own” a single tree, but does own a castle. At the moment, negotiations are held to transfer the castle to the state so that it could enjoy the status of all other territories managed by the Parkforestry, mostly because the company is not rich enough to provide adequate means to maintain the castle.

How far is this characteristic of other sites in East-Central Europe? This needs to be clarified through further research.

Good examples of clear ownership are to be found in England. Hatfield Forest, for example, belongs to the National Trust, which is a registered charity and completely independent of government. They have an Act of Parliament, therefore their properties are inalienable by law. The ownership of Hatfield therefore is very simple: it belongs to one legal body and cannot be taken away from it under any pretext. Burnham Beeches are another good example. This site is owned by the Corporation of London. This legal body is also registered charity, and also has its own Act of Parliament that makes its properties inalienable. The Corporation is indeed older than the Parliament itself, therefore has a very long tradition of being independent. These examples, however desirable, are unrealistic in East-Central Europe, mostly because the tradition of long-established independent agencies with heritage management as their main focus do not exist. A more similar example to that of Visegrád is the New Forest, which almost entirely belongs to the Forestry Commission,  a governmental department. The Forest has recently been declared a National Park, which puts it into a situation quite like Visegrád and Pilis. The effects of this event, however, are yet to be seen.

e. Management

An important factor to be considered at any heritage site is the legal protection the territory has. This is especially so in the case of World Heritage sites, because being on the World Heritage list does not, in itself, give any formal protection. (It is unlikely, however, that a site without any protection could ever make it to the List.)

The built heritage in Visegrád is protected as Historical Monumental Environment, and several buildings are protected individually as well. This, given the presence of the local museum, works very well, although there are oddities, such as the upper castle mentioned above. Any improvements – as laid out in the development plan for the city – can only be carried out with the consent of the Museum. As for the woods, the whole area is part of Duna-Ipoly National Park, and thus is protected. This is apparently enough to avoid serious problems, but how is the protection implemented?15  It should, in theory, be carried out through the management plan of the National Park. This, however, does not exist, and will remain non-existent in the foreseeable future. Why is this so?  Although the management plan should exist by law, at the moment the National Park Directorate is unable to produce it. Four people work in the Pilis branch of the National Park (on some 20 000 ha!) and their capacities are fully used. To prepare a full management plan would, in their estimate, involve a team of 10-odd people working for years. External funding to hire a consulting company is not available.

For the moment, the substitute for the missing management plan of the National Park is the forestry management plan of the Pilis Parkforestry. This, nonetheless, puts nature protection in a passive situation. They have to countersign every operation that goes on in the woodland, but they cannot actively make the Parkforestry do anything they do not want to do. For example, a well-known fact in habitat management is that meadows need mowing (or at least grazing) so as not to lose their characteristic plants.16  If the Parkforestry wants to mow one of the beautiful upland meadows in Pilis, the National Park will certainly not object. If, however, the Parkforestry would not mow the meadow, the National Park cannot do anything to make the mowing happen, and in consequence the plants will be lost.

Furthermore, it is obvious that once the management plan of the National Park is ready, a strange situation will occur: the same territory will have two management plans. Can this really be the situation the parties wish to achieve? A recent policy document of the Nature Conservation Authority of the Ministry for Environment, entitled “The forestry concept of nature protection and its long-term development strategy”17  attempted to address this problem. This 70-page work was born out of the pressure laid both on foresters and nature conservationists to work towards woodland management that would meet the standards of the twenty-first century, and is mostly applicable to the situation in Visegrád. It describes how those woods within nature protected areas should be managed. It also acknowledges that it is close to impossible to have state-owned limited companies with economic pressures on them running woodland management in nature reserves and expect them to manage those woods putting conservation in the first place (which is exactly the situation in Pilis). The solution this document offers is that the whole system of woodland ownership should be transformed and the limited companies should rather be budgetary agencies with proper state subsidies. (This is how the Pilis Parkforesty would wish things to be). The document also proposes that it would be best if the National Parks overtook much of the woodland in their respective territories, however, this would create another problem: there would be no control over the National Parks in how they manage their lands. Management plans are also discussed, but in a somewhat vague manner, pointing out some of the difficulties, but avoiding frankly asking whether two management plans for the same area are necessary. Instead, close co-operation is suggested between foresters and nature conservationists. Not a word is written about how a piece of land could be managed two ways at the same time.

The document described above will most probably directly influence the management of the proposed World Heritage area. Some of its points are reasonably close to what appears to be the best solution at the moment, but some are evasive. Pressure should be laid on policy makers to come up with a workable solution for the problem of management plans.

f. Inter-Agency Relationships

Another highly relevant issue in the management of Visegrád, already touched upon several times, is the relationship between different agencies and authorities in the area. As we could see, their territorial competences often overlap. This is not only true for the Parkforestry and the National Park. The latter oversees the local Museum as well (because the Museum buildings and all the protected monuments are within the town of Visegrád, which is entirely part of the National Park). It is also obvious the Local Government of Visegrád cannot be left out of any decision that affect the future of the site. It is therefore essential that all parties involved maintain at least a good working relationship.

Although everybody I have ever heard talking complained about the National Park to a certain extent, in general the situation seems to be better than expected. Even where the most problematic situation could be imagined – between the Parkforestry and the National Park – no very serious conflicts are known. The National Park sympathises with the Parkforestry and understand that they have meaningless, but nonetheless strenuous, economic pressures on them. This is apparently due not to a general understanding atmosphere between foresters and nature conservationists, but is inherent in the site. Visegrád is a small town where people know each other. Personal contacts have long histories. Some of the staff of the National Park started their careers at the Parkforestry.

g. Finances

Where does the money to finance an effective management come from? Virtually all of it from the institutions that are directly involved in the management: the National Park, the Parkforestry, the King Matthias Museum, and the Local Government. To the best of my knowledge, no substantial money comes from outside this circle. The general financial situation is therefore restricted. Money, on the other hand, is very short. Probably the single most irritating problem of the National Park is the lack of money. They do not even possess proper offices. The number of staff should also be at least doubled. However, as long as the only source of income is the central budget, slow improvement can be hoped for at the most.

Money, however, plays a part in the development of the area not only through incomes, but has more subtle ways of influencing the situation. The Parkforestry again will serve as an example. Game-keeping in the area is a highly profitable business. The more deer and wild swine live in the area, the higher the income from hunting – but the worse for the regeneration of plants. As the Parkforestry is a limited company with economic pressures on it, however much they would like to lower the numbers of game, they cannot afford it. These numbers are set in a separate law, however, the numbers there are expressed as ’from a X to Y in a given territory’, which leaves far too much room to move whose interest it is to maintain unnaturally large numbers of deer and swine. The Parkforestry claims that hunting should not be a commercial activity in a National Park, but first they would have to be a budgetary agency rather than an economic company to be able to give up the incomes from hunting.

h. Visitor Management

This aspect of the site will have to explored in depth. Visegrád is one of the main tourist destinations in the country, comfortably close to Budapest to attract even weekend visitors to Hungary. The possible inclusion of the site in the World Heritage List would most probably double this number,18  which is a problem all parties involved seem unprepared to handle.

4. Conclusions

At the present stage of research, it would be too early to draw conclusions. The individual aspects of the management of the site need to be explored in more depth, more aspects need to be included, and the necessary comparative data must be collected and processed.


Footnotes

1.  http://whc.unesco.org/pg.cfm?cid=160
2.  Bernard M. Feilden and Jukka Jokilehto, Management Guidelines for World Cultural Heritage Sites (Rome: ICCROM, 1993).
3.  For more on Periodic Reporting, see http://whc.unesco.org/pg.cfm?cid=172.
4.  The Tentative List is the official pool of sites in any given country from which those sites to be actually nominated for inclusion into the World Heritage List are chosen.
5.  In the spirit of Jenő Szűcs, Les trois Europes (Paris: Editions L’Harmattan, 1985).
6.  Definitions are not obvious. For a long time a site had to be either natural or cultural, now (within the cultural part) cultural landscapes are recognised, however, definitions being restrictive as they are, many sites would never exactly fit them. Bialowieza (see later in connection with Poland) is a good example. It is inscribed as a natural site, and it is only recently being discovered how much of a cultural landscape it really is.
7.  József Laszlovszky, ed., Medieval Visegrád (Budapest: ELTE, 1995).
8.  Oliver Rackham, The Last Forest (London: Dent, 1989).
9.  The first larger study was probably Colin R. Tubbs, The New Forest: An Ecological History (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1968). Note that this was also about a Royal Forest.
10.  For more on the history of Pilis, see Péter Szabó, Woodland and Forests in Medieval Hungary (Oxford and Budapest: Archaeopress and Archaeolingua, forthcoming).
11.  Mátyás Szőke, Visegrád: Ispánsági központ (Visegrád: county centre) (N. p.: TKM Egyesület, 1986).
12.  Károly Janata, Beszámoló jelentés a Pilis Bioszféra Rezervátumról (Report on the Pilis Biosphere Reserve) (unpublished, 2004).
13.  Ferenc Horváth, Katalin Mázsa, and Géza Temesi, “Az erdőrezervátum-program” (Forest reserves programme in Hungary), ER 1 (2001): 5-20.
14.  The following is based on discussions with Péter Erdős, leader of the Visegrád unit of the Pilis Parkforestry.
15.  The following is based on discussions with Miklós Papp, leader of the Pilis branch of the Duna-Ipoly National Park.
16.  William J. Sutherland and David A. Hill, ed., Managing Habitats for Conservation (Cambridge: University Press, 1995), 197-230.
17.  A természetvédelem erdészeti szakmai koncepciója és távlati fejlesztési feladatai. http://www.kvvm.hu/dokumentum.php?content_id=295&section_id=2
18.  Myra Shackley, ed., Visitor Management: Case Studies from World Heritage Sites (Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2000).