Mission and Vision

The Institute’s mission is to perform a public service that covers a variety of administrative and professional duties relating to the protection of immovable cultural heritage and of the movable and living cultural heritage associated with it. The heritage that makes up an important part of the cultural diversity of Slovenia is at the same time an inseparable part of European and world heritage.

The Institute’s mission is not based merely on the numerous procedures linked to the direct conservation of heritage and the prevention of damage. It also carries out a large number of measures aimed at incorporating heritage into modern life, presenting heritage to the general public and developing awareness of its value. Its central measures also include the provision of access to heritage and its enjoyment by current and future generations.

The Institute comprises two main organisational units: the Cultural Heritage Service and the Conservation Centre.
The key tasks of the Cultural Heritage Service are:

• to identify, document, study, evaluate and interpret immovable, movable and living heritage, and to present it to the public within the context of heritage protection more

The Conservation Centre comprises the Restoration Centre and the Preventive Archaeology Centre. The Restoration Centre carries out the following tasks:

• works on and directs the development of the conservation and restoration profession
• manages and carries out preliminary research into the monuments referred to in the second indent of the second paragraph of Article 34 of the Act more

The Preventive Archaeology Centre carried out the following tasks:

• manages and carries out the preliminary archaeological research referred to in the first indent of the second paragraph of Article 34 and the third paragraph of Article 34 of the Act more

In addition to the legally specified tasks, the Institute devotes a great deal of attention to the promotion of cultural heritage, since such promotion has a crucial role to play in its protection and conservation.

Promotion, and the popularisation that goes with it, can be carried out across a number of areas and in several ways. However, regardless of the diversity of content, most of these methods have a large number of points in common – not only in terms of their common objectives (a decisive and positive effect on cultural heritage and its protection, and general public awareness), but also within certain specific activities related to promotion.

Promotion of the activities of the IPCH is entirely directed towards informing the public of the importance of cultural heritage conservation, and the threats to it, and to encouraging performance of the basic tasks that the modern world and civilisation must undertake in order to guarantee its further existence. The IPCH carries out promotional tasks in the form of lectures, guided tours of monuments, exhibitions, online presentations, pamphlets and the Spomeniškovarstveni razgledi publications series, and in other forms that have become established in contemporary heritage protection. The IPCH has been particularly successful in enhancing the image of cultural heritage promotion in Europe through its series of ‘Days of Cultural Heritage’.

At the Institute, we are aware that cultural heritage can only be protected by people themselves.