Centennial Hall in Wrocław

• Eastern Bridge road proposal
• Lack of overall development plan for the property and its buffer zone
• Large-scale projects completed or in an advanced stage of development
• Management issues

N/A

On 1 February 2024, the State Party submitted a state of conservation report, which is available at https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1165/documents/ and provides information on the measures implemented by the State Party in response to the decision adopted by the World Heritage Committee at its extended 45th session (Riyadh, 2023), as follows:

• The updated management plan is expected to be finalised and submitted to the World Heritage Centre by the end of 2024;
• Projects with potential impact on the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of the property are subject to review processes to ensure compliance with the provisions of local development plans and agreement by heritage conservation services;
• Information on the state of conservation of the property and the various projects being implemented within the property and its buffer zone has been shared with the World Heritage Centre between 2013 and 2022;
• The Development and Management Master Plan of the Centennial Hall and its Buffer Zone is part of the Local Spatial Development Plan prepared in 2013 to show how the various areas of the whole complex would be used. It was shared with the World Heritage Centre in 2014;
• In January 2023, in accordance with the Act on the Protection and Care of Monuments, the Regional Conservator of Monuments assumed responsibility for all competencies related to cultural heritage within the Municipality of Wroclaw. As a result, decisions concerning the assets inscribed in the Register of Monuments and local planning were adopted by the State Conservation Service to ensure a unified approach to the World Heritage property and its buffer zone;
• A Reactive Monitoring mission has been invited to take place after 10 May 2024.

Following the request of the World Heritage Committee to the State Party to invite a joint World Heritage Centre/ICOMOS Reactive Monitoring mission to the property, the World Heritage Centre informed the State Party on 23 October 2023 that the mission could be carried out during the week of 27 November 2023. On 26 January 2024, the State Party invited the Reactive Monitoring mission to the property and requested that it be scheduled after 10 May 2024 due to the local elections in Poland and the involvement of the municipal authorities in the preparations. On 26 February 2024, the World Heritage Centre indicated its availability and that of ICOMOS to carry out the mission during the week of 9 September 2024. The dates of the mission were confirmed by the State Party on 10 May.

The information that the updated management plan for the property and its buffer zone is planned to be finalised by the end of 2024 is to be welcomed. It is also noted that the State Conservation Service is now responsible for all decisions regarding protected assets within the World Heritage property and its buffer zone.

However, it is to be underlined that the conservation challenges faced by the property and raised since 2011, which led to a Reactive Monitoring mission in 2011 and subsequent exchanges and reporting, stem from the lack of timely notification by the State Party of ‘the intention to undertake or to authorize major restorations or new constructions which may affect the Outstanding Universal Value’. Such information, according to Paragraph 172 of the Operational Guidelines, ‘should be given as soon as possible (for instance, before drafting basic documents for specific projects) and before making any decisions that would be difficult to reverse’. Information was only provided at the request of the World Heritage Centre and after decisions had already been made for large-scale projects within the property, its buffer zone and wider setting, such as the Main Terrace Restaurant Pavilion, the Underground Car Park adjacent to the Centennial Hall and related facilities, the adaptive reuse of the Four Dome Pavilion, the Afrykarium and the Great Island Avenue, among others.

Concerns raised by ICOMOS in its reviews of these projects and technical recommendations remained unaddressed, including the request to provide clearer cartographic documentation of whether and how the route of the Great Island Alley would encroach on the Szczytnicki Park, and how many trees would need to be felled to enlarge the road in this section. The World Heritage Committee may wish to request such documentation.

Compliance with national or local provisions does not necessarily guarantee the safeguarding of attributes and their capacity to convey the OUV of the property. Therefore, there is an urgent need to strengthen the management system and its mechanisms to prevent such situations from recurring in the future. Intentions for projects should be communicated to the World Heritage Committee in a timely manner and an assessment of impacts should be made in relation to the attributes of OUV and not just in relation to compliance with national or local provisions.

In this regard, the Committee is advised to recommend that the State Party develop mechanisms that integrate the preparation of a Heritage Impact Assessment (HIA), in conformity with the Guidance and Toolkit for Impact Assessments in a World Heritage Context, for any project, irrespective of its scale and nature, that may impact on the attributes that convey the property’s OUV. The revision of the management plan provides the appropriate context for reviewing and strengthening the governance and management mechanisms. The updated management plan will also need to be based on an updated assessment of the current condition of the attributes underlying the property’s OUV and their capacity to convey it. Therefore, the Committee is advised to request that a cumulative assessment of the direct and indirect impacts of all implemented projects on the OUV of the property be carried out to understand what potential negative impacts the property may have suffered, what mitigation measures may be required, and to integrate them into the management planning cycle of the revised management plan.