Turku, Finland/Prague, May 15 (CTK) – The restoration of Kuks, a baroque complex in east Bohemia, won the European Grand Prix for heritage conservation, a prestigious award presented by the Europa Nostra association, in Turku on Monday, Jan Cieslar, from the Czech National Heritage Institute (NPU), has told CTK.
The Grand Prix carries 10,000 euros.
The top award went to seven best European heritage conservation projects shortlisted from a group of 29 nominations, all of which received the Europa Nostra cultural heritage awards earlier this year.
The success of Kuks is “a historic success” of the Czech Republic, since this is for the first time that the Grand Prix went to a Czech project, NPU director Nadezda Goryczkova, who attended the prize-giving ceremony, told CTK.
Apart from Kuks, the nominations included another Czech project – the NPU’s educational programme promoting cultural heritage.
The 2017 European Nostra winners were declared in early April. Representatives of the EC and the Europa Nostra association had chosen them from among more than 200 competing projects.
Kuks, a village on the Labe (Elbe) River, prides in a baroque hospital building, which Count Franz Anton von Sporck had built in the late 17th century and whose decorations include a well-known series of allegorical sculptures of virtues and vices by Matthias Braun (1684-1738).
Enjoying the status of a national cultural monument, the complex underwent a thorough reconstruction in 2013-15.
Goryczkova said the jury appreciated it on Monday again that the restoration of Kuks was not approached as a renewal of a whole complex, not of a building only.
She said the restoration of the Kuks hospital is an example of a project of building and landscape protection involving experts from a variety of branches.
The complex’s reconstruction, including the establishment of an educational centre, cost almost 440 million crowns.
Kuks is the most popular state-owned tourist destination in the Hradec Kralove Region, east Bohemia. A record 140,000 people visited it in the first year after the restoration.
Monday’s presentation of the victorious projects and the prize-awarding ceremony took place within the ongoing Congress of the European Cultural Heritage, which Europa Nostra organises under the aegis of the Finnish president.
