European Heritage Days will be organised on 12th & 13th and 19th & 20th September for the seventeenth time in Poland. Their aim is to promote national and regional culture as the source of European heritage. This year festivities come under the name ‘Rescue the Monuments! Following the trail of towns, castles and fortresses’.

In 2009 the Silesian Museum in Katowice will join EHD for the second time.

The program includes:

Starting 12 September – exhibitions ‘Silesian palaces and their owners’ will be presented in front of the museum in al. Korfantego 3, to show the architecture and interior design (often non-existent today) of Polish estates from the turn of the 19th and 20thcentury. Among the old photographs and postcards we can find the Hunting Lodge in Promnice and the famous ‘Little Versailles’ in Świerklaniec from 1870-1873.

18th September – opening of ‘The Gallery of Polish Painting 1800-1945’ , one of the foremost collections of this type in Poland, after its renovation as a permanent exhibition of the Silesian Museum. On 19 & 20 September admission is free.

Within EHD archive photographs of European cities dating from the beginning of the 20th century will be presented by our fotoplastikon from around 1900, one of the few existing in Poland. Fotoplastikon is a device for showing three-dimensional pictures.

On Saturday and Sunday 18 &19 September we would like to invite you to The Centre for Polish Scenography , the Division of the Silesian Museum (located at pl. Śejmu Ślaskiego 2), where you can see the exhibition ‘Meetings with a Doll’ presented by the ‘Ateneum’ Theater in Katowice.