SAVE Europe Publications

Heroic Survivors - Hungarian Castles and Country Houses

This report is one of a series planned by SAVE Europe's Heritage looking at groups of historic houses in different countries and regions of the continent. The first In the hour of need: Twelve French chateaux and a barracks looked at a group of outstanding chateaux in France which are in dire need of new owners or new uses.

This report is based on a tour of about fifty houses in northern Hungary, both east and west of Budapest. István Varga, of the Hungarian Castle Association 17 estimates that today about 2,000 castles survive (the Hungarians use the word kastely in the same sense as chateau). About 800 of these are protected through the National Board for the Protection of Monuments.

By Marcus Binney

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Moscow Heritage at Crisis Point (2007)

This bilingual report between MAPS (Moscow Architecture Preservation Society) and SAVE Europe’s Heritage illustrates the immediate, extensive and overwhelming threat to Moscow’s architecture.

Currently undergoing rapid redevelopment the city is under threat of losing many of its most beautiful and fascinating buildings of which more than a 1000 have been destroyed in the past five years alone!

The publication is comprised of a series of touching essays, case studies, reports on Moscow’s preservation movement and recommendations on how to move forward. Moscow Heritage at Crisis Point is the first international survey of its kind.

The report can be downloaded from the MAPS website (click here). Alternatively copies are available from SAVE Britain's Heritage - we ask for a voluntary donation of £15.

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Moscow Heritage at Crisis Report - 2nd Edition (2009)

Following up from the 2007 report this new edition brings our attention back to the continued threat to Moscow’s architectural heritage. This latest bilingual report from SAVE Europe’s Heritage and MAPS (Moscow Architectural Preservation Society), with support from DoCoMoMo International, lists the latest loses, the current threats and proposals to help protect Moscow’s historic buildings. This new edition, which displays 200 pictures across 128 pages, also includes information about threats to St Petersburg.

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Samara: Endangered City on the Volga

This latest report from the Moscow Architecture Preservation Society (MAPS) and SAVE Europe's Heritage outlines the threats facing the rich architecture of Samara, a great city on the Volga, where the people of Moscow were evacuated during the World War II.

The report is edited by Moscow-based architect Vitaly Stadnikov. Stadnikov is a native of Samara, an author of a book on its 20th-century architecture and an expert on provincial Soviet Constructivism. The report is the work of Russian and foreign experts, drawing on examples of sustainable development from all over the world to point to a way forward for Samara.

Corruption in Samara has led to uncontrolled demolition of huge areas of the city, massive new construction and even the assassination of planners and architects. The book details losses and features the city’s remaining architectural gems, including its beautiful wooden architecture, Art Nouveau, industrial and Constructivist buildings, and presents a plan for the regeneration of the city.

176 pages, fully illustrated, bilingual.

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Silesia: The Land of Dying Country Houses

This report by SAVE Europe's Heritage examines the plight of the country houses of Silesia in western Poland. All but abandoned after the aftermath of WWII, these once grand houses now stand neglected and decaying in almost unimaginable numbers.

Silesia was one of the richest and most fertile provinces in Europe. Almost every village had its own great house and grand set of farm buildings and villages followed every few miles as in the most prosperous parts of England, France or Italy. Many of these remained ancestral homes until 1945 when whole populations fled or were moved on. In the place of the German families who left, Poles arrived from eastern Poland, evicted from Polish provinces seized by the Soviet Union.

The report identifies the scale of the problem, describing over 100 houses, most of which are in desperate need of repair. They include fine examples, large and small, of renaissance, baroque, neo-classical and romantic architecture. The authors, Marcus Binney, Kit Martin and Wojciech Wagner, suggest strategies for rescuing and reusing some of these magnificent buildings.

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Twelve Chateaux and a Mighty Barracks

This is the first of a series of illustrated reports to be published by SAVE Europe's Heritage on historic buildings in need of repair, of new uses or new owners, or simple tender, loving care.

The chateaux are remarkable first of all as fine examples of French architecture, some of high importance, some simply attractive. Second, though they languish gently, almost all stand in a beautiful, largely unspoilt setting, little blighted by modern development. They all therefore have clear potential for revival.

The record of France in protecting and looking after its major monuments, and ensuring they are kept in good repair, is better than any other large and populous European country. Equally private citizens and benefactors have repeatedly stepped in to save fine historic buildings.

The plight of the chateaux illustrated in this report is no way an indictment of general government policy or a wide malaise. Some of these buildings are in trouble because they have been acquired not by French but by foreign investors who have overstretched themselves. Yet the predicament of these buildings is both real and immediate. The philosophy of SAVE Europe's Heritage is that it takes one person or organisation with determination and commitment to save a fine building and it is this spirit that we publish this report.

By Marcus Binney, Calder Loth and Philippe Seydoux

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Unforgiveable Assault on a World Heritage Site

Goodbye to the landscape of the famous Villas of the Veneto as factory sheds march unchecked across open countryside.

A World Heritage Site designated to protect the villas of the great 16th century architect Andrea Palladio is under double assault, first from a proposed new motorway which will run within hundreds of metres of historic villas and farmsteads, and second from rapid and widespread construction of vast new cappenoni (brutes of warehouses) in open countryside.

The proposed new motorway, the Valdastico Sud, has been approved by the Italian Government despite objections from the Ministry of Culture and the Sovrintendenze [official monuments service] for both Archaeology and Heritage. It is the subject of legal challenge arising from the fact that 23 out of 36 members of the official Environment Commission were replaced after they rejected the proposals as being too damaging. The new members of Commission promptly approved the route of the road with only minor modifications.

Save Europe's Heritage condemns both the motorway and the rampart building of factories, warehouses and showrooms in hitherto unspoilt fen countryside. The flat fenland south of Vicenza flanked by beautiful hills is of immense historic interest having been the subject of complex drainage and irrigation works since Roman times. Though the Veneto Region (Regione Veneto) has a statutory duty to draw up landscape plans protecting sensitive or valuable landscape it has so far failed to take action.

Save Europe's Heritage report 'Unforgiveable Assault on a World Heritage Site' calls for the plans for the Valdastico Sud motorway to be withdrawn pending a full independent assessment of the breach of standard European environmental assessment procedures for major infrastructure projects. Secondly it calls on both the Regione Veneto and the Italian Government to put an immediate stop to random building of factories, sheds and showrooms in open countryside and to draw up and implement proper landscape plans for the protection of the fenland country south of Vicenza.

The authors of the report are Marcus Binney, Chairman of Save Europe's Heritage; Franziska Bollerey, Professor of Architectural and Urban History at Delft University of Technology; Alex Creswell, artist and author; Alex Foehl, specialist in industrial architecture, and Adam Wilkinson, Secretary Save Europe's Heritage. Principal photography was undertaken by Calder Loth, Senior Architectural Historian to the State of Virginia, and Francis Machin, architect and designer.

An E-Report launced on SAVE's website in 2008 - provides an update. Click here for further information.

Published August 2003

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Victorian Jersey

A celebration of Victorian architecture in Jersey - illustrated in colour. Published 1985.

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