The Museum of King Jan III's Palace in Warsaw, Poland serves as an example of how a museum can impact local development. The museum consists of 17th-18th century architecture, collections of art and artifacts, French-Italian style gardens, and a nature reserve situated along the old valley of the Vistula River. This combination of culture and nature has stimulated investment in a new neighboring city district. However, the museum faces pressures from conservation efforts on one side and aggressive commercial projects on the other. ICOM resolutions recognize museums' responsibility towards cultural landscapes and their role in heritage protection and sustainable development of surrounding territories.

1. Museum of King Jan III’s Palace at Wilanow,
Warsaw, Poland.
Conservation and Restauration of the Museum
placed between the Metropolia and Nature Reserve and its
influence on the social surrounding and local administration.
Dorota Folga Januszewska

2. The form and organization of the Museum of King Jan III’s Palace at Wilanow, Warsaw, Poland – may serve as a key
example of an institution where museum professionals can find all kinds of questions concerning the impact of a
museum on the local development:
1. Museum consists of:
• the 17th. – 19.th c. architecture masterpiecies: a palace, side-annexes, Orangerie, farm buildings,
pavillons;
• Collections of arts and crafts from Antiquity to the 19th. C., Library and Archives;
• French - Italian Style and Romantic Gardens with underground spaces of historical cisterns;
• Wilde gardens and fields with ponds, lakes, streams and cascade;
• Natural Reserve called Morysin with 19th c. monuments (among other - articficial ruins) situated in the old
valey of Vistula river

4. Nature Reserve
„Morysin”
French-Italian
Baroque and
Romantic Gardens
Palace
Farm

5. Fot. Jerzy Gumowski, Gazeta Wyborcza

6. This coexistance of culture and nature stimulated investors to built a new city
(New quarter: Wilanów City) in the neighbourhood of the museum.
The museum became „a neigbour -treasure”
but also a stumbling block for commercial investements
beeing pressed from both sides:
- conservation, nature and heritage care’ law regulations from one side,
- agresive and commercial projects from the other side.

7. Fot. Jerzy Gumowski,
Gazeta Wyborcza
The Old Valey of Vistula River,
Wilanow, Warsaw

8. In this situation, the Wilanów museum posed an argument to be analysed:
Conservation of nature and culture heritage generates higher revenues
then new investments because:
1. Museum as a center of heritage care is one of the most valueable tourists offer
2. Museum is one of the greatest employer in the region
3. Museum offers education and offers work for educators
4. Museum stimulates „culture industries” (publications, multi media products, digital
equipments technologies, games, etc)
5. Museum activates seniors and organizes special occupations (social budgets) and
supports social stimulation programs.
6. Museum activates local activities (gastronomy, hotels, meeting clubs)
MUSEUM COOPERATES CLOSELY WITH LOCAL ADMINISTRATION

9. Museum and local development was the essential point of the ICOM Resolution:
The Responsibility of Museums Towards Landscape - adopted by the ICOM General
Assembly in Milano, July 9, 2016
Resolution No. 1:
The Responsibility of Museums Towards Landscape
ICOM Resolution on „extended museum”
Museums and landscapes are an essential element of humanity’s physical, natural, social and symbolic
environment.
Landscape is a highly complex network, defined by relationships between social and natural elements.
The richness of landscape arises from its diversity.
Museums are part of the landscape. They collect tangible and intangible testimonials linked to the
environment. The collections forming part of their heritage cannot be explained without the landscape.
Museums have a particular responsibility towards the landscape that surrounds them, urban or rural. This
implies a dual duty: on the one hand, the management and upkeep of heritage in a sustainable
development perspective for the territory; on the other, attention given to images and representations
that identify and connote the landscape itself.

10. Considering the above, and
Remembering UNESCO Conventions, ICOM Code of Ethics and NATHIST Code of Ethics;
Knowing that the concept of Cultural Landscape incorporates not only the physical size of a territory, but
also a wide range of intangible factors - from language to lifestyle; from religious belief to the different
forms of social life; from technology to ways of life and production, as well as to power relations and
exchanges between generations;
Recognizing that such concept encompasses soundscapes, olfactory, sensory and mental landscapes, and
also the landscapes of memory and of conflict, often incorporated in places, objects, documents and
images, endlessly expanding opportunities for museums to take action on cultural landscapes;
Understanding that museums contribute with the knowledge and expertise of their professionals, to raise
awareness among communities - helping the development of decisions that involve a transformation of
the landscape;
Considering that museums share the task with other institutions working to preserve heritage and
ensuring its management and development.

11. The 31st General Assembly of ICOM recommends that:
Museums extend their mission from a legal and operational
point of view and manage buildings and sites of cultural
landscape as 'extended museums', offering enhanced
protection and accessibility to such heritage in closed
relationship with communities.
Museums contribute not only to the knowledge of the
values of cultural landscapes, but also to the development
of symbolic frameworks that determine them, so that the
notion of cultural landscape becomes an instrument for the
assessment of what needs to be protected, enhanced and
handed on to future generations, and what will go instead
questioned, criticized and modified.
The International Council of Museums assumes the need to
emphasize the mention of cultural landscapes in its key
documents, such as the Definition of Museum, the ICOM
Statutes and the ICOM Code of Ethics.