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The aim of this paper is to explore the forms of official and unofficial negotiation, using the rescue of the Staré Hrady castle, renovated between 1949 and 1993, as a case in point. The paper first outlines the earlier history and current situation of this monument, then the cultural and legal context, the actors and, lastly, the history of the rescue itself. It then proceeds to examine the final phase of the rescue to provide an illustrative example of a castle renovation project that was financially and ideologically supported by the regime and where the rescue went hand in hand with its cultural use, which served as an argument for the renovation in the first place. The paper discusses the forms of communication formally required for the official negotiation related to this project, as well as the informal level of the negotiation, which existed outside the written sources. It concludes that both of these negotiation levels were equally important for the preservation of the Staré Hrady castle: they were used as dictated by the situation and ultimately aimed at achieving the same goal: to preserve a cultural monument whose restoration had been considered impossible and pointless a little more than two decades earlier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines official negotiation methods behind the renovation and simultaneous use of the Staré Hrady castle between 1949 and 1993, as an example of the rescue of a cultural monument in communist Czechoslovakia. It is concerned with the mechanisms of actor-institutional communication at regional level at work within the broader circumstances prevailing in then Czechoslovakia, arguing that this negotiation was in fact the driving force behind the successful reconstruction of this castle after many years of expert-led volunteer work.