Rēzekne City and Municipality Weigh Options for Preserving Heritage Buildings
Officials from Rēzekne city and Rēzekne municipality outline how local funding supports the preservation of locally significant cultural monuments, and where funding and coordination challenges remain.
Since 2023, Latvian municipalities have held authority over locally significant cultural monuments, while regionally and nationally important sites remain under the National Heritage Board. Rēzekne city and the surrounding municipality together have 107 locally significant monuments — mostly administrative and residential buildings in the city, and ancient burial sites, churches and manor buildings in the municipality.
Municipality support
Rēzekne municipality has run a co-financing program since 2014, recently totaling about 20,000 euros a year. Culture and Tourism Department head Daiga Miščenko says owners can secure up to 100% funding by combining municipal support with National Heritage Board project grants. Plans include expanding advisory services, since owners often lack access to specialists such as architects. Still, not all available funding is used each year, partly because owners fear taking on long-term project responsibilities. Uncoordinated work and requests for retroactive funding after work is already completed have also caused problems. Larger sites such as manor houses require substantial investment the municipality cannot cover alone, so efforts currently focus on smaller projects and resident initiative. One contentious case is the restoration project for the Kūka school building at Lūznava manor, which the municipality withdrew from before work began.
City support
Rēzekne city currently offers no dedicated financial support specifically for monument owners, though its apartment building renovation program partly covers historic structures. This year the city introduced new support for preserving sacral buildings, offering up to 10,000 euros per application with a total budget of 40,000 euros. Urban development department head Georgijs Orlovs also described plans for a new commerce center in the Rēzekne river valley, part of a broader market area reconstruction near the historic city center.
