Conservation and Urban Reform in Senj, 1945–1949

U tekstu se prikazuju prvi poratni napori u očuvanju i restauriranju spomenika bombardiranog Senja te planovi za njegovo revitaliziranje. Stanje u Senju stavlja se u povijesnu perspektivu istraživanja započetih u drugoj polovici 19. stoljeća, a prvih pet godina konzervatorskog djelovanja prikazuje se prema arhivskim vrelima u tekstu i slici. Uz već poznata imena hrvatskih konzervatora, u tekstu se donose podaci o ulozi Vuka Krajača u planiranju očuvanja i razvitka toga povijesnoga grada.The paper examines information from the history of research and preservation of both individual monuments and the urban image of Senj. While the focus of interest is on the years following the Second World War, the frst section of the text recalls the pre-war national tradition of town research. The author argues that, in depicting events in the wake of wartime devastation, an account could to be given either of continuity or of the setting up of new principles in conservation and urban planning. Thus the frst portion of the paper centres on researchers who, prior to the bombardments, had set up a kind of cult of monuments in Senj as a nationally relevant town. This was a tradition launched by Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski in his travelogues and topographic descriptions of the monuments and then picked up by local researchers Stjepan Sabljak, Mile Magdić and Pavao Tijan. From the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, this creation of the image of Senj as a heritage setting was equally the work of travel writers, painters and photographers. The nearly hundred-year-old tradition saw contributions from renowned scholars Gjuro Szabo and Artur Schneider, as well as photographers Ivan Standl, Ljudevit Griesbach and Josip Kratochwill. After the bombardments, Senj awoke to the end of the Second World War as one of the most devastated of Croatian towns. Following the initial reactions of Senj photographer Ivan Stella in 1943 and the first inspection by conservator Tihomil Stahuljak in 1945, life in the ravaged town continued in the new state. The official attitude to Senj also indicates problems in the setting up of a new conservation system in the People’s Republic of Croatia. The town was relatively far away from both Zagreb and Rijeka, situated at the ends of the regional offices’ jurisdictions. In the months after the war, the town was inspected by Zagreb conservators Ljubo Karaman, Anđela Horvat and Ana Deanović, and, once the Conservation Department in Rijeka was established, the task was taken up by Mladen and Branko Fučić, Aleksandar Perc and Iva Perčić. The paper reveals records from the archives of the Conservation Department in Zagreb, kept by the Croatian Ministry of Culture. In a chronological overview, information is presented from travel reports, studies and correspondence from the time of the Five-Year Plans, a period that was quite promising for Senj. These practical assessments and recommendations are examined in their social context, i.e. within the framework of political reforms by the new communist state. While the Zagreb and Rijeka conservators drafted basic documents such as the Protocol on the Protection of Heritage in the Town of Senj of 1947, insisting on the concepts of maximum preservation of the historical setting, the inability to set up a permanent conservator in the town opened the way for appointments of honorary conservators. Although only appointed in 1949, Vuk Krajač was recognized soon after the war as an important ally of conservation ofcials. He authored the Study on the Regulation of the Town and Port of Senj of February 1949, where he discussed the preservation of the character of the historical town setting (as seen by the influential Gjuro Szabo prior to the devastation) and its development into a socialist town: one wellconnected and with developed industry and tourism, growth of population, cultural activity, physical culture and trade. The article draws attention to how the ravaged historical setting of Senj was treated. Krajač, as a man with the confdence of Zagreb and Rijeka conservators, fought in his home town for procedures of reconstruction (Gulden Tower and Lipica Tower) and adaptation with stylistic restoration (transformations of Vukasović Palace into the City Museum, Ježić Palace into a theatre building and the Grand Magazines into state ofces and ofcials’ residences), as well as for substitutional new architecture with commemorative features (project for the Uskok Mausoleum at the site of the demolished St. Francis’ Church). He took the city walls with their towers, as depicted by Valvasor, as a model for the efforts to bring the town back to life