There have been a lot of regional events in the last period of time about which I would like to report.

Accepting the kind invitation of Marcin Zamoyski, Mayor of Zamosc, I attended the Conference “Investment in the Cultural Heritage as the Future of Tourism Development” which took place on 15 May, 2010, in Zamosc. A major part of the event was the ceremonial opening of a renovated section of the fortress and city-walls. My colleague from the Regional Secretariat, Ákos Capdebo, visited Kutná Hora on 7-8 May, on the occasion of the international conference titled “Tourism Development at V4 Countries” (Visegrad countries: Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland). He made a presentation about tourism and architectural heritage of Budapest.

On 4th June, we took part in the prize-giving ceremony of the “World Heritage-A Youthful Vision 2010” children’s drawing contest in Banská Stiavnica. For the ceremony, the children prepared a nice program with singing and dancing, and finally they said the words “world heritage” in a couple of different langugages. The organizers of the drawing competition said that this year they received a large amount of applications and the quality of the drawings was higher than ever.

The 8th Conference of the Central and Eastern European Member Cities of the OWHC will take place on 14-16 September, 2010, in Krakow. Our Regional Secretariat takes an active part in the organization. I commissioned Mr. Capdebo to go to Krakow for the preparation of the conference. He visited Krakow on 24-26 June and discussed about the details with the organizing committee. They also visited the world heritage sites in and around Krakow which will be shown to the participants of the regional conference in September. 

Soon after the regional conference, Warsaw will hold a conference titled “Colour on Historical Facades, From the Middle Ages to Modern Times” on 22-24 September, 2010. We will represent Budapest there, of course.

Dr. Katalin Kiss, Coordinator of Regional Secretariat, Central and Eastern Europe