From 2 May 2019, the Department of the Preventive Maintenance began the implementation of a follow-up project called Pro Monumenta II.

Project Pro Monumenta II. received a grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway in the amount of 1,500 thousand € through EEA Grants. The project is co-financed in the amount of 225 thousand € from the state budget of the Slovak Republic.

Again, this is a pre-defined project funded by the EEA Grants under the "Cultural Entrepreneurship, Cultural Heritage and Cultural Cooperation" program, and its main objective is: 

Completion of a sustainable system of preventive inspections of immovable monuments so that at least 100 inspections per year are carried out within it and construction of 3 small training centers for traditional craft practices used in the restoration of monuments.

 The duration of the project implementation is 36 months: 1 May 2019 - 30 April 2022.

In practice, this means in particular the expansion of our inspection groups, each by 3 new, trained inspectors and the adaptation of existing buildings managed by the Monuments Board of the Slovak Republic for the needs of the Department of Preventive Maintenance (OPÚP). At this time, inspections are carried out on monuments owned / administered by the state, territorial, regional and local self-government, registered churches in the Slovak Republic, which are publicly available. These inspections are free of charge. Upon request, inspections of monuments owned by natural and legal persons are also carried out, which submit applications to the subsidy system Let's Renew Our House (OSSD) - sub-program 1.6, as a basis for the commission's deliberations when assessing applications. 30 monuments have been selected, where inspections have been carried out in the past and technical report (TSKP) has been prepared, which will again be subjected to our inspection and the fulfillment of the recommended works named in the technical reports will be checked.

In addition to strengthening them by one inspector, the work efficiency of all three teams was also increased by the introduction of the use of drones for visual inspection of hard-to-reach places of the monument or the addition of smaller mobile workshop to the addition of team equipment. The informative value of the main result of the performed inspections - Technical reports on the monument - will be increased for the owner / administrator at the end of the project by calculating the estimated price of repairs that will result from the inspection.

The training centers and regional centers of the Department of the Preventive Maintenance of the Monuments Board - Pro Monumenta will be established within the existing suitable buildings under the administration of the Monuments Office of the SR within Regional Monument Board Trnava, Regional Monument Board B. Bystrica - workplace B. Štiavnica and Regional Monument Board Prešov - workplace Levoča. Each of the training centers will have its main traditional craft focus as follows:

Trnava - lime plaster, plaster, simple facade stucco, locksmith
Banská Štiavnica - carpentry, wooden shingles, traditional carpentry
Levoča - plumbing, artistic plumbing, carpentry

The restored and adapted buildings of the Monuments Board (PÚ SR) selected for this will have an administrative part for PM inspectors and a teaching part - suitable for theoretical training for 10-12 people, as well as specific craft workshops, warehouses for tools and materials, or garages for their mobile workshops (equipped cars). The workshops will serve not only for practical "workshops" for training participants, but also as workshops for Pro Monument inspectors. We plan to organize 4 events called "Clean The Gutter Day" in the historic centers of Skalica, Banská Štiavnica, Kežmarok and Levoča, during which all our 12 real estate inspectors will try to clean as many gutters as possible with the help of local owners / administrators of monuments. Follow our News section or FB profile Pro Monumenta to learn more.

Project Pro Monumenta - prevention by maintenance (for which the project Pro Monumenta II. follows up) was a predefined project supported by the EEA Financial Mechanism for the years 2009-2014 and from the state budget of the Slovak Republic. The project was also part of the Program Statement of the Government of the Slovak Republic for the years 2012 - 2016 and one of the tasks of the strategic government material "Strategy for the Protection of the Monument Fund in the Slovak Republic until 2020".

The Pro Monumenta project - prevention by maintenance gave rise to an organizational unit within the Monuments Board of the Slovak Republic in the years 2014 - 2017: the Department of Preventive Maintenance (OPÚP). The OPÚP improves knowledge about the current state of immovable cultural monuments, their minor defects are removed on the spot and at the same time the awareness of owners or administrators of immovable cultural heritage in Slovakia about the possibilities of their maintenance is improved.

Both implemented projects Pro Monumenta - maintenance prevention & Pro Monumenta II. they are based on the assumption that the regular maintenance of an immovable cultural monument is many times cheaper than its comprehensive monument restoration every few decades.

The basic goals of the Pro Monumenta project - prevention by maintenance implemented in the years 2014 - 2017 were:

Creation of a system of preventive monitoring of immovable national cultural monuments, registered in the Central List of Monuments Fund in accordance with § 22 of Act no. 49/2001 Coll. on the protection of the monument fund, as amended. Involvement of the owner, monument users, maintenance workers, cleaners: everyone who can create an "early warning" system.

Basic information about the project - summary:

Title: Pro Monumenta - maintenance prevention

Implementation date: 1 January 2014 - 30 April 2017.

Prescribed sustainability: at least 5 years

Allocated funds: € 1,152,056

Basic goal: Creation of a system of preventive monitoring of immovable cultural monuments in the Slovak Republic.

Project outputs:

• monitoring of 221 immovable cultural monuments

• 3 three-member monitoring teams were created, operating throughout the Slovak Republic: comprehensively trained and technically and excellently equipped monument inspectors

• 6 seminars were prepared for administrators and owners of real estate monuments

• we have prepared 7 electronic manuals for administrators and owners of real estate monuments for download: click on the "For the owner" section

• we organized 3 meetings with a Norwegian partner and foreign experts

• we have created this website of the project, the great benefit of which is also the Reservation form, through which the owner / administrator of the monument requests the Department of Preventive Maintenance of the Monuments Board of the Slovak Republic to monitor the construction and technical condition of the monument.

You can read how the project and its impacts on the field of cultural heritage were evaluated in the Evaluation Report for the whole program. The CLTTPP001 Pro Monumenta - maintenance prevention project is evaluated throughout the report, but especially on pages 29-31.

EEA grants represent the contribution of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway to a green, competitive and inclusive Europe. They have two main objectives: reducing economic and social disparities in Europe and strengthening relations between the contributing countries and the 15 EU countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltics. The three contributing countries work closely with the EU through the Agreement on the European Economic Area (EEA). EEA grants are co-financed by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway according to their GDP. As donors, they gradually provided EUR 3.3 billion through grant schemes between 1994 and 2014.

EEA grants for the period 2014-2021 amount to € 1.55 billion. The priorities of this period are:

• Innovation, research, education and competitiveness

• Social inclusion, youth employment and poverty eradication

• Environment, energy, climate change and a low carbon economy

• Culture, civil society, good governance and fundamental rights

• Justice and home affairs

Eligibility for these grants reflects the criteria set for the EU Cohesion Fund, which is intended for Member States with a gross national product (GNP) per capita below 90% of the EU average. All projects are 15% co-financed from the state budget of the Slovak Republic. To learn more about programs and projects funded by EEA Grants in Slovakia, visit www.eeagrants.sk