Impact of the Nara Document on Authenticity – case of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Banská Štiavnica

Banská Štiavnica – an antient mining town in Slovakia – has been internationally recognized as having an outstanding universal value and it has been included in the World Heritage List. This fact represented a challenge which accelerated the process of its protection and restoration. By 2012 the sites’s authenticity had been subject of study on urban level developing a site-tailored test of authenticity. In 2002 in the framework of the international conference Materials, Techniques and Technologies in Built Heritage Conservation participating renown experts adopted the Banská Štiavnica Appeal. This key document transmitted the principles of the Nara Document on Authenticity (1994) and applied them to the concerned cultural conditions. In the spirit of the Appeal, in 2007 a plan was set up to save and restore the Banská Štiavnica Calvary complex. The article explains the strategy of its revitalization; a combined approach to re-establishing the heritage landscape, the values with respect to authenticity; the public participatory approach, authorities’ engagement, management and fundraising, as well as development of a scientific methodology for the conservation and restoration interventions, mechanisms for sustainability. The Baroque Calvary became an example of how interruption of use, neglect, and abandonment allow vandalism and uncontrolled vegetation expansion. Unprofessional interventions and restrictions related to its religious use during socialism (1979 – 1981) contributed to losses of architectural and urban values. The process of safeguarding and conserving the complex was accelerated by the fact that in 2007 it was included in the list of "100 most endangered monuments in the world".