Pro Monumenta

Welcome to the website of the Department of Preventive Maintenance of Monuments Board of the Slovak Republic. 

We operate a dedicated website that has served for over 10 years to provide information about the methods and possibilities of preventive maintenance for immovable monuments in Slovakia. Here you can find guides on how to properly inspect a monument on your own or carry out minor repairs. You can also request an inspection of your monument and the creation of a technical report on its condition through the registration form in the top menu (the inspection and preparation of the technical report are free of charge). You will also find information about opportunities to participate in courses and training in traditional building crafts that the department organizes throughout the year. Additionally, there are details about projects that have helped establish the entire system of preventive maintenance of monuments in Slovakia.

The Department of Preventive Maintenance of Monuments is here to help you keep immovable monuments in the best possible condition.

Pro Monumenta II.

The Pro Monumenta II project was financed with a total amount of €1,500,000 through the EEA Grants, and co-financed with €225,000 from the budget of the Slovak Republic. It was a predefined project implemented within the program "Entrepreneurship in Culture, Cultural Heritage, and Cultural Cooperation."

The main goal of Pro Monumenta, which has been successfully achieved, was to establish a sustainable system for preventive inspections of immovable monuments, ensuring that at least 100 inspections are conducted annually and to create three small training centers for traditional craftsmanship used in monument restoration.
The project implementation period was initially set for 36 months but was later extended to 52 months: May 1, 2019 – August 31, 2023.

As part of the second phase of the project, the capacities of the inspection teams were expanded by three newly trained inspectors, and existing buildings managed by the Monuments Board of the Slovak Republic were adapted for the needs of preventive maintenance. Inspections were conducted on heritage sites owned/managed by the state, regional, and local self-governments, as well as registered churches in Slovakia which are publicly accessible. 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. By the end of April 2023, a total of 344 inspections had been carried out, while 210 were planned for the project.

Training centers and regional centers of the Department of the Preventive Maintenance of the Monuments Board - Pro Monumenta were established within the framework of existing suitable buildings under the administration of the Monuments Board of the SR within Regional Monuments Board Trnava, Regional Monuments Board B. Bystrica - workplace B. Štiavnica and Regional Monuments Board Prešov - workplace Levoča. Each of the training centers carried out its main traditional craft focus as follows:

Trnava – lime plasters, plasteri, simple facade stuccos, locksmith

Banská Štiavnica – carpentry, wooden shingles, tradicional carpentry

Levoča – plumbing, artistic plumbing, carpentry

A total of 33 craftsmen were retrained in the new training centers as part of the project.

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 were used not only for practical “workshops” for training participants but also as workplaces for the inspectors of Pro Monumenta.

In 2021–2022, four all-day events titled Gutter Cleaning Day in historic town centers were organized in the towns of Skalica, Banská Štiavnica, Kežmarok, and Levoča. During these events, all twelve inspectors, with the help of the owners/managers of the monuments, managed to clean gutters on over one hundred immovable monuments.

The implementation of the Pro Monumenta project significantly contributed to the organizational and material-technical support of the process of cataloging a thousand heritage sites managed by the state, which is one of the tasks of the Ministry of Culture within the Recovery and Resilience Plan.

Basic information about the second phase of the project realized from 2019 to 2023:

Title: Pro Monumenta II – preventive maintenance

Implementation period: May 1, 2019 – August 30, 2023

Prescribed sustainability: minimum 5 years

Allocated funds: €1,500,000

Project partner: Riksantikvaren – Directorate for Cultural Heritage

Basic goal: Establishment of a preventive monitoring system for immovable cultural heritage in Slovakia

Follow our News section or the Pro Monumenta FB profile, Instagram to learn more.

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 for this period are:

• Innovations, research, education, and competitiveness
• Social inclusion, youth employment, and poverty reduction
• Environment, energy, climate change, and 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 co-financed by 15% from the state budget of the Slovak Republic. If you want to learn more about programs and projects funded by EEA Grants in Slovakia, visit www.eeagrants.sk. We would also appreciate it if you could fill out a survey examining awareness of EEA and Norwegian Grants. The survey can be found at the following link: https://forms.gle/Sz33LdSidy5aWKy39