Last year, 182 cultural monuments were added, and 46 lost their protection

Prague - Last year, the state declared 112 properties as cultural monuments, and 70 movable items became new monuments. Conversely, 46 cultural monuments lost their protection. In this case, however, the National Heritage Institute (NPÚ) does not distinguish whether it concerned a building or an object. The data are derived from the annual report of NPÚ published on the website. According to this report, there were a total of 40,401 immovable monuments in the Czech Republic at the end of 2016. The NPÚ only estimates the number of movable cultural monuments to be approximately 100,000 items, which include variously sized collections of objects.

The highest level of state monument protection was enjoyed, and therefore declared a national cultural monument, 304 immovable properties and items by the end of 2016.

The annual report provides a detailed account of last year's attendance at monuments, the data of which NPÚ had already partially published earlier. More than 5.619 million visitors visited the monuments managed by NPÚ in the past year, an increase of 600,000 compared to the previous year. This marks a new record in the modern history of the Czech Republic, with visitor numbers to state monuments increasing for several consecutive years.

The highest attendance among more than a hundred castles, châteaux, and other heritage sites managed by NPÚ was, as usual, the Český Krumlov castle and chateau with 426,691 visitors. It is followed by Lednice Castle with 410,937 visitors, while the third place is occupied by Hluboká in South Bohemia, which attracted 293,673 visitors. A total of 13 monuments had attendance over 100,000 people. At the very end of the table are the state castle of Litice (3,135 visitors), Chervené Poříčí Castle (2,441), and the church of Krásné Březno (1,996).

The director of NPÚ, Naďa Goryczková, stated that last year most of the managed sites, including the less well-known ones, recorded higher visitor numbers. The aforementioned Litice castle is among the 36 sites for which NPÚ prepared the Undiscovered Monuments project, whose advantage is the absence of long queues at ticket offices and personal reception by the castle manager or guide.

Last year, NPÚ managed with 1.5 billion crowns. It received 755 million crowns from the state for operations, and the institute obtained an additional 137.5 million for financing its programs and 40 million for research and development. NPÚ’s own revenues last year amounted to 557 million crowns. Compared to 2015, its own revenues increased by nearly 42 million crowns, primarily driven by ticket sales. Revenues from rentals, mainly associated with filming at heritage sites, rose by 3.5 million crowns.