Balancing Between Local and Global: Heritage Presentations of Central European Small Towns (Case of Telč and Bardejov)

Abstrakt

We understand heritage presentations (i.e. tourist websites, guidebooks, magazines as well as various publications and museum exhibitions on local history) as products of the towns' deliberate utilization of the heritage for local development. In other words, heritage presentations serve as the instrument of development; as a tourist attraction as well as an identity-producing resource.

Through the analysis of various heritage presentations of the Czech town Telč and the Slovak town Bardejov, the proposed chapter will discuss how small towns balance between the local and the global level in these presentations. In recent decades, the centres of these two towns became World Heritage Sites, which enforced Telč and Bardejov to reformulate their presentations.

Did the global aspect completely replace the traditional local heritage narrative or just join it supplementarily? Both Telč and Bardejov are small towns in remote areas; underdeveloped, but with the attractive mark of being a World Heritage Site. Global-heritage level was achieved by Telč in 1992, and by Bardejov in 2000, when their historical centres were included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Besides this 'newly-acquired global status', both towns already possessed a "traditional set" of local tangible cultural heritage, recognized as National Cultural Heritage by the Czech/Slovak state (chateau, Catholic and Protestant churches in Telč; historic spa buildings, Greek Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches in Bardejov). The chapter will compare the towns' heritage presentations created before and after the moment of the UNESCO-inscription.

We presume that through 'the newly-acquired global status', these particular heritage sites (i.e. historical centres) became the main tourist attraction of Telč and Bardejov. Therefore, to what extent was the shift of the selection of the heritage chosen to be promoted after the inscriptions in 1992/2000? Is the global level more emphasized, overshadowing or even displacing the 'traditional set'of the local heritage? Or, on the contrary, are the towns presenting their heritage as more complex and coherent, as a connection between local and global?