Drodzy Czytelnicy,

this year, for the first time in history, Poland will host the session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee which is scheduled to take place in Kraków between the 2nd and 12th of July. This prestigious event will, on one hand, undoubtedly constitute an immense organisational challenge for our country, on the other hand, it shall also give Poland a unique opportunity to present to this broad, international assembly not just the 14 properties which are already inscribed on the UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage List, but also the remarkable richness and diversity of our cultural and natural heritage in general. The present supplement to the “Ochrona Zabytków” magazine was written with the general public in mind and is an extended version of the “World Heritage Review Special Issue” dedicated to World Heritage in Poland. WHR is a quarterly published by UNESCO available in English, French and Spanish. One’s a year it traditionally devotes a single issue to the cultural and natural heritage of the country which hosts the UNESCO World Heritage Committee session in the given year. To present the cultural and natural heritage of our country on a few dozen pages of WHR special issue was no easy task. We were forced to make a difficult selection of sites and topics. Finally, for obvious reasons, we focus on those sites which are most widely acknowledged by the international community and inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. However, we have made efforts to present our heritage in the broader context of the entire range of historic monuments which exist in our country as well as to show how our monument protection system operates and how it evolved to become what it is today. The supplement to the “Ochrona Zabytków” which you hold in your hands today has been prepared in both Polish and English, allowing the greatest possible number of Readers to become acquainted with the contents that could not have been published on the pages of “World Heritage Review” in full due to limitations of the publisher. Two main parts of this supplement are: the articles which describe the system that was put in place in order to ensure the implementation of the provisions of the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage within the territory of Poland; and richly illustrated presentations dedicated to the 14 World Heritage properties, presenting the wide range of problems related to their protection, conservation and management. In order to emphasise the fact that heritage remains inextricably linked with human lives, the third section includes a series of essays containing the recollections, reflections and experiences of persons who have become associated with the selected World Heritage properties in Poland in a variety of ways. The final article is no less important than the rest, for it is devoted entirely to the UNESCO Memory of the World programme. It is intended to draw our attention to the associations between documentary heritage and the effective protection of our historic monuments as well as its significance in this regard. To conclude, I sincerely hope that the contents of the present volume, prepared in connection with the 41st session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, will arouse kind interest not only among faithful Readers of our magazine. prof. dr MAŁGORZATA ROZBICKA Director of National Heritage Board Of Poland