Download File - UNESCO World Heritage

Changes in water level: Water levels in Pradnik are
falling, due it seems to mining in Silesia. In addition,
an important part of the Pradnik stream is captured at
its source for supplying water to Suloszowa, and this
has further affected the water regime of the valley.
There are plans to try and get water from another
supply and also to release the captured source.
Air pollution: There has been heavy air pollution in
the past due to the Silesian industrial region.
Although the situation is now much improved, air
pollution is still a problem. Not many lichens are seen
in the forest and there is damage mostly to coniferous
trees in exposed locations.
Air pollution also has a negative impact on buildings
– acid rain attacks stonework and the sheet metal
covering of villas in the health resort.
The only option which appears to be open to the ONP
authorities to improve matters is to encourage the
conversion of heating from coal to gas. This work was
started in 1993 and is continuing.
Tourism: Pradniks’s position, so near to Cracow and
in the heart of a Region inhabited by around a quarter
of the population of Poland, means that pressure from
tourists is a key problem. Currently around 400,000
people visit the area and regulating them at the height
of the season seems to be outside the ONP’s control.
Nor are they able to have an impact on erosion
problems caused by the visitors. The ONP is currently
trying to influence the tourist model at a strategic
level and thus to effect a change from recreational to
more educational visits.
Authenticity and integrity
The area proposed has an integrity in that it consists
of a carefully selected, topographically meaningful
length of valley with an historically arbitrary but
spatially sensible hinterland.
The nomination states that ‘The monuments and
landscapes … are fully authentic in a scientific,
aesthetic and emotional sense … they are examples of
the continuation of tradition and technology.’ It goes
on to say that this is also a living landscape, with
traditional forms of land use still current. It is also an
altered landscape, reflecting different methods of land
use themselves reflecting the basic environmental
circumstances. The present landscape, it asserts, is
therefore the result of processes of organic change
acting on the natural landscape. It plays a genuine role
in modern society, not least in setting standards in
conservation based on old methods, which maintain
the character of the area and guarantee the
continuation of full authenticity of structure, detail
and decoration of the buildings.
It could be argued that the valley is evolving and
therefore the evolution in building traditions and the
changes in land management (in some places
meadows and fields have been abandoned) exemplify
that change. However the changes also reflect a
decline in traditional practices; there has been heavy
restoration on a number of buildings, and it is difficult
81
to see the area as an exemplar of building
conservation practice in general, and in part the
landscape is managed by the ONP for nature
conservation reasons, rather than to reflect traditional
farming practices. Thus it could be argued that the
integrity of the landscape as a cultural landscape
reflecting a local form of development has been
compromised.
Comparative evaluation
The valley is the most visually attractive and best
known of the many ‘Jurassic valleys’ in the southern
Polish uplands. The only possible Polish rival would
be the karst valleys of the Pieniny and western Tatra
mountains which are in fact quite different on several
scores.
No properties currently on the World Heritage List
are directly comparable; yet at ‘Czeski Raj and Czeski
Kras many elements similar to those occurring in the
Valley of the Pradnik’ can be found.
The nomination dossier itself notes that cultural
landscapes ‘scattered all over the karst area of
Bohemia frequently exhibits a higher architectural
quality than that of the Ojcow region’. Apparently
similar areas of karst geomorphology are markedly
different eg Mont Perdu. A close analogue is the
World Heritage site at Aggtelet Karst and Slovak
Karst (Hungary and Slovakia), but like other karst
sites regionally, and indeed in other parts of Europe, it
is dismissed in the nomination because it is, unlike
the Pradnik Valley, mountainous. Nevertheless, the
Zadielska Dolina in the east of that area is ‘a
picturesque valley … also associated with the ruins of a
medieval castle’; but its density and range of cultural
monuments are, it is argued, less than in the Pradnik
Valley.
Another comparator lies in the calcareous uplands of
the Grands Causses of the southern part of the Massif
Central, France. Geological and geomorphological
features are similar, though the gorges, of the Tarn for
example, are visually much more dramatic than the
Pradnik Valley – again to the advantage, according to
the dossier, of the latter with its small-scale
attractiveness and ‘concentration and variety of cultural
monuments’.
‘The agricultural exploitation of the Pradnik Valley …
is representative of the traditional agriculture of central
Europe … The form of the traditional agricultural use
of the land in the Ojcow region is closer to the
traditions of the uplands in Germany. The most
analogies can be found in the valleys and gorges of the
Franconian Jura especially ‘Franconian Switzerland’.
The essence of the ‘comparative analysis’ in the
nomination is that the Pradnik Valley is different, and
especially valuable, because it is not mountainous like
other major karst areas, and because of its human scale,
its small-scale character, its accessibility and
picturesque quality, its demonstrable interrelationship
between the natural and cultural, and its visible phases.
Clearly the nominated area is important within Poland
but it would be difficult to argue that it is outstanding