History alone won't lure them
"The Palace of Culture is our Eiffel Tower" says the media advisor to president of the Polish National Tourist Office's (POT), Krzysztof Turowski. The 231-meter-high skyscraper, a 'gift' from the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to the Polish nation and the highest building in Poland, is a hated symbol of communist oppression to many Varsovians.
However, "the Palace has already become a symbol of Warsaw to foreign tourists whether our politicians like it or not. We have to get rid of old historical sentiments and use it in the best way we can," says Turowski, who also praised moves to make the edifice more than just an eye-catching landmark. "The creation of a museum of communism in the Palace will definitely attract many tourists," he said.
Poland is one of the few countries easily accessible to tourists from the West with such rich social-realist architecture. One of Kraków's districts, Nowa Huta, was built in the early 1950s as a model socialist city to counterbalance the bourgeois Kraków. The city is an anomaly you won't find in Western Europe, and offers up architectural flavor Western visitors should be eager to taste.
Still, say the experts, more needs to be done to make the district a real tourist draw. "Definitely Nowa Huta could become an additional attraction when touring Kraków," said the director of the Institute of Tourism (IT), Krzysztof Łopaciński, adding that a museum of communism would help attract visitors. However, he also points out that a few pubs, restaurants and other extra-sightseeing attractions are equally as important as the monuments. "Nowa Huta is definitely a good product. But it needs to offer much more than just communist architecture," Łopaciński concludes.
The recent communist period however, is just the tip of Poland's historical iceberg. Could Poland's rich World War II history, for example, be used to attract foreign visitors?
Łopaciński doubts whether Poland could become a World War II heritage site attracting tourist from around the world. "Germany is winning this field. Hundreds of thousands of American and British soldiers were in Germany at the end of the war and they come to visit the places where they fought. Also, Germany has run a huge campaign for families of soldiers who served in the country after the war. We can only attract Russians," he explains.
Łopaciński says that there are interesting sites such as Hitler's headquarters in Kętrzyn - a huge complex where, in the summer of 1944, the failed attempt to assassinate the German leader took place. "It is an interesting place, visited by tourists who are in Mazury. But there is nothing there except for an old bar. There is nowhere for tourists to spend their money. Even a guard in a German uniform would be something" Łopaciński complained.
"All these historical attractions, forts and battlefields must have something more to them - a reenactment of the battle, a duel, a souvenir shop, something to make the people want to leave money and, most important, to make them want to come back," Łopaciński says.
