Strategies for intervention on the architectural heritage of Novi-Sad in the light of the event "European Capital of Culture 2022": the conservation of the Czech Warehouse

Novi Sad is the cultural and administrative center of Vojvodina, the northern region of the Republic of Serbia, and the second most important city after Belgrade. In 2015, it applied for the title of European Capital of Culture 2021 (postponed to 2022 due to the pandemic) and obtained it, triggering a series of cultural and infrastructural operations. This recognition not only gives the city the opportunity to renew itself, but above all to redefine itself, in a context, the Serbian one, which has undergone numerous upheavals and transformations during the last century, making Novi Sad a city still in search of its own identity. The purpose of the following paper is to outline, through a process of analysis developed on several levels and combined with direct experience, the importance of the preservation of the “Czech Warehouse” in the light of the renewal of the neighborhood of which it is part, which is an object of particular importance in the cultural program for the event of 2022. Analyzing the events that have affected the Republic of Serbia during the twentieth century, passing to the study of the development of the city itself and, in particular, of the district of Liman (located in the southern part of Novi Sad, which was built from the sixties and has gradually incorporated the industrial district located on the riverbanks, called “Chinese quarter”, and the Czech Warehouse) until the understanding of the most recent events related to ECoC2022, it is clear how change is a destabilizing constant in the history of Novi Sad. The document promotes, therefore, the preservation and reuse of the “Czech Warehouse” within a social and cultural framework of the city that is still forming and that, therefore, needs fixed points within the process of finding its own cultural identity.