Is sound heritage? Sound is inherent to every building, every object. A wind which whistles its way through a church door, the bustle of people on a market square, the echo inside a church or even farm machinery harvesting the year's crops...

And yet, we still rarely think about sound as part of heritage. For this episode of Holistic Heritage, hosts John Beauchamp and Dr Katarzyna Jagodzińska are in the Portuguese town of Mafra at the UNESCO site of the Royal Buildings of the Palace, Basilica and Convent, where heritage and museum specialists have gathered to discuss sound in museums and heritage sites.

In the episode, we speak to Alcina Cortez, a sonic researcher and founder of the Sound in Museums Conference, as well as Luisa Santos Professor at the Catholic University of Portugal and a curator at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, on the role of sound in heritage.

As part of our endeavours of raising awareness of the sonic layer of heritage and making heritage sounds more accessible, the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub for Central and Eastern Europe has set up the Heritage Sound Register. While still in its initial phase, it aims to provide the public with free to use sounds.

Among the sounds on the register you can hear a number of sound artefacts which are an inherent part of the cultural heritage of Central and Eastern Europe. In the podcast, you can hear the industrial complex in Dolni Vitkovice in Ostrava, a mechanical loom at Łódź's Central Museum of Textiles, a excavator at the Queen Louise Adit in Zabrze, and the Mocănița logging train in Romania's Maramureș region. You can find more here.

The implementation of new architecture in World Heritage City Areas is a challenge. What is allowed and what needs to be negotiated? What is the range and limit of these negotiations? Isn’t it better to build new somewhere else, leaving protected areas as they are?

In October 2025, on the occasion of the conference of the Organisation of the World Heritage Cities of the Central and Eastern European Region held in Kraków, Katarzyna Jagodzińska meets with representatives of Budapest, Vilnius and Riga about the various dimensions and relations between old and new architecture in highly protected areas of these cities.

Many thanks to our guests for this episode:

Ákos Capdebo
Senior officer in charge of OWHC
Department of City Planning, Mayor’s Office of Budapest City

Donata Kabelkė
Head of Cultural Heritage Preservation Division at Vilnius City Municipality

Aigars Kušķis
Expert in Management Planning Questions of Historic Centre of Riga UNESCO World Heritage Site
City Development Department, Riga City Council

The Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum, located on a peninsula on the Danube in the vicinity of the Slovak capital of Bratislava, is one of the most stunning places created specifically for modern and contemporary art in Central Europe in the 21st century.

It was founded thanks to the determination of art dealer Vincent Polakovič and the involvement of Dutch investor Gerard Meulensteen. The building, resembling the shape of a Roman galley with oars, was designed by Slovak architect Peter Žalman.

The idea of a museum in the shape of a ship refers to its location – the Danube – which connects the countries of the region. It is especially symbolic in Čunovo, where the borders of Slovakia, Hungary and Austria meet.

Katarzyna Jagodzińska came to visit the museum in its jubilee year, 2025 – a quarter century after its opening – to learn how the place has rooted in this amazing spot. Her guide at the tour of the immense grounds of the museum is Michaela Simonova. The museum turns out to be an integral part of the green ecosystem – not only a place for art, but also leisure to enjoy Danube’s beauty accompanied by chirping birds on one of the many deckchairs.

For this episode of On The Road, we are in the Bulgarian Valley of the Roses and the town of Kazanlak to find out more about rose production.

John Beauchamp and Katarzyna Jagodzińska visit Kazanlak, where they meet Denitsa Barekova from the Rose Museum in Kazanlak, who explains the history of roses in the area and the traditional methods used to make coveted rose oil and other rose-related products.

Apart from the history and traditions of rose oil making, we also learn about the industry and as it stands now thanks to a meeting with Aleks at Lema, one of Kazanlak’s rose oil distilleries on the outskirts of town.

An ensemble of sculptures in the Romanian city of Târgu Jiu by renowned artist Constantin Brâncuși is now on the UNESCO Heritage List.

For this episode of Holistic Heritage, John Beauchamp and Dr Katarzyna Jagodzińska are in Târgu Jiu, where they take a look at the Brâncuși sculptures: the Table of Silence, Gate of the Kiss and perhaps the best known sculpture of the ensemble, the Endless Column.

We also visit the Deputy Mayor of Târgu Jiu Dr Adrian Tudor, who speaks about the process of getting Brâncuși’s ensemble onto the list and the city's plans regarding their new status as a UNESCO city since 2024. He is joined by colleague Oana Șomănescu, who kindly helped translate our conversation.

Muzeum Sztuki (literally “Art Museum” in Polish) is one of the first contemporary art museums in the world, and was conceived by renowned artist Władysław Strzemiński and created thank to the grassroots collection of art pieces from leading artists connected to Paris at that time.

Over decades the museum expanded, occupying three buildings connected to the textile industry which built the wealth and identity of Łódź. Even today, it remains one of the leading museums of modern and contemporary art, interconnected with major international institutions.

In this episode Katarzyna Jagodzińska and John Beachamp hold a meeting with Dr Leszek Karczewski, Deputy Director of the Muzeum Sztuki, to learn about coexistence of this “temple of art” with the capital of textile industry in the 20th and 21st centuries.

A background for the conversation is a participatory exhibition (“How the Museum Works”, 2025/2026) co-created by the entire team of the museum and mounted in the first museum building called ms1 located in the former palace of the owner of the Poznański textile enterprise, while the whole story starts and ends in the gardens of the Herbst Palace, part of the Scheibler textile empire, winner of the Europa Nostra Award medal for conservation in 1990.

For this episode of Holistic Heritage, we meet the team at the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub for Central and Eastern Europe and take a look back at the first few years of the Kraków Hub and its activities.

Hosted by John Beauchamp and Dr Katarzyna Jagodzińska, Head of the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków. Also featured in the episode are Deputy Head of the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków, Dr Joanna Sanetra-Szeliga, and Communications Manager Łukasz Pieróg.

The Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków was established in July 2022, hitting the ground running to increase awareness of heritage issues across the region.

A major project undertaken by the Heritage Hub in Kraków was the mapping of the NGO heritage sector in the CEE region. We also set up the Kraków Heritage Forum, a series of meetings for practitioners to discuss local matters, such as culinary traditions and the Fortress Kraków network of forts surrounding the city.

We also discuss how our podcasts are a great tool to communicate our activities and the regional heritage ecosystem to a global audience.

In the episode, you can hear excerpts of soundscapes recorded while travelling across the region:

1. Organ interlude at St. Mary’s Basilica in Kraków, home of the Wit Stwosz alterpiece which won a European Heritage Award / Europa Nostra Award in 2023.
2. Walking the Via Transilvanica hiking trail near Piatra Fântânele in Romania, summer 2024.
3. A crackling fire opens the Łemkowska Watra festival in southern Poland in July 2024.
4. Urban soundscape of the city of Lviv, western Ukraine, April 2024.
5. Mining machinery in operation at the Queen Luiza Adit mine in Zabrze, Poland, early 2025.
6. Onboard a vaporetto in the Italian city of Venice on the occasion of the European Cultural Heritage Summit in September 2023.
7. The snap and crackle of wicker weaving at the Serfenta Association in Cieszyn, Poland, April 2025.
8. Mechanical looms being operated at the Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź, June 2025.
9. A thunderstorm in the Beskid highland village of Nowica, summer 2024.
10. The Polish-Ukrainian folk band “Hraybery” play in the south-eastern border town of Przemyśl, summer 2024.

In this edition of Holistic Heritage, we speak to three heritage practitioners in Poland’s southern city of Kraków and what makes this city so special in terms of creating and running cultural heritage projects.

Join hosts John Beauchamp and Dr Katarzyna Jagodzińska, Head of the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków, as they speak to Katarzyna Sosenko, an art historian and Chair of the Sosenko Family Collection Foundation, Artur Wabik, mural artist, curator and Chair of the Comic Museum Foundation in Kraków, and Krzysztof Żwirski, a long-term collaborator with the Kraków Municipality and mastermind behind numerous projects promoting cultural heritage in the city and beyond.

What makes Kraków such a special city to create and undertake cultural heritage projects? How does the city compare in terms of grass-roots movements and bottom-up initiatives? How does Kraków fare in comparison to other urban centres in the region?

Find out more in the podcast – and also remember to download our latest report on the heritage-based third sector in the CEE region!