How to assist owners in maintaining their historically valuable properties?

The System of Valuable Heritage Protection Assistance was established by the Municipal Self-government in 1993, accessible under ‘municipal protection’ to proprietors and users of buildings which are not heritage buildings proper, but which preserve the traditional face of the city and its architectural characteristics.

The success of this form of support is unique; in certain neighbourhoods it establishes a veritable ‘movement for renewal’. Wherever a house is beautified with municipal assistance, sooner or later neighbours will wonder if they should do the same. Many houses resubmit applications in successive years and have new reconstruction work done from the money awarded. If the gateway can be restored out of the money available this year, next year there may be new assistance for the repair of the window frames, and perhaps the plastering of the façade may be repaired and painted in the third. In other words, tasks can be phased and this is a tremendous advantage. The current financial situation of the house can be considered, and on this basis the most urgent work can be undertaken first. (Repair to decayed parts of a building can be done more cheaply the earlier work is begun, and often one year of delay may cause significant additional costs.)

A further secret of success is that municipal protection entails few obligations and great advantages. Naturally the building authority does not permit their demolition, but the owners stand a good chance of applying for assistance aimed at the preservation and restoration of the original condition. In addition, the Department of Valuable Heritage Protection of the Mayor’s Office offers significant professional assistance. (This help may extend from ensuring harmonisation of the budget and plans and their sound financial and professional foundations, up to the shades of colour to be applied to the façade and to selecting the appropriate solutions in building technology.)

The application system of the Valuable Heritage Protection Assistance is capable of ‘mobilising’ twice or three times as much money as the sums spent by the Municipality for renovation, and of putting it into the service of the reconstruction of buildings and hence of the city. Nor is it a matter of indifference to the owners that the enhanced value of their renovated buildings (in the case of a renewed façade, for instance) may equal five or six times the original sum of assistance.

Festive moments in the ‘movement’ of the Valuable Heritage Protection Assistance are the exhibitions opened annually on the Day of the Capital City, presenting the best results of the year’s renovations. The exhibition can also be visited in the Mayor’s Office later in the year, and can be viewed in retrospect at any time on the Internet.

The sum available within the annual budget is distributed by the Committee of Urban Planning and Defence of Urban Image of the Municipal Assembly with the agreement of the Cultural Committee. Successful applicants may receive assistance in the form of a grant or interest-free loan (for a period of 2 to 5 years), or as a combination of both. As a proportion of the instalments flowing back into the Municipality increases the Assistance Fund, the sum for distribution has grown annually.

Within ten years owners of houses have effected around one thousand works of restoration by utilising the System of Valuable Heritage Protection Assistance, adding their own savings to the sums won through application.

This renovation is already apparent throughout the city; it has changed the face of entire areas of the city, together with road reconstructions and the development of infrastructure financed by the resources of local governments. We again have streets and squares where the most conspicuous elements are no longer those buildings which have been renovated, but those which are yet to be.

We are able to gradually amend the dilapidation of once excellent buildings, and thus we have been able to see to the renovation of an annually growing number of residential houses and public buildings within the framework of the programme of reconstruction.

Valuable Heritage Department of the City of Budapest
Dr. Katalin Kiss (Head of unit)

01/01/1993

31/12/2006

case

Urban Policy > Urban environment > Cultural heritage

Conservation of historic buildings