With the fall of communism, attention is being focused on preserving the region's heritage. Many noble refuges has been restored and converted into swank hotels and rural retreats. There has also been a revival in interest in stonework. Mom-and-pop stone workshops have mushroomed in cities and towns across the region. Lower Silesian quarries churn out stone to cover the facades of new buildings and to build the streets in Warsaw and Berlin. The advent of the free market in this region has also rekindled the allure of carved stone. But this modest renaissance is a far cry from the grand traditions of Lower Silesian stonemasonry that flourished in the second

half of the 19th century. Even today the Polish carvers who rebuilt Wroclaw and Warsaw, and reconstructed many historic buildings across Europe in the post-World War II era, are dying off, making the Lower Silesian carver an increasingly endangered species. Tadeusz Wlodarczak and his companion, writer/photographer Juliet Golden, live near Wroclaw in Lower Silesia. "Tadek", an accomplished stonemason/carver is the instructor of the Stone Carving Workshop in Charleston in November, and together they will make a presentation at the Symposium about the stonework of Poland and the Czech Republic.

Large prehistoric granite figures dot the slopes of Sleza, a solitary, somewhat mysterious mountain rising from a stretch of fertile plain in the middle of the province. These sculptures may date back to the Iron Age but there is no certainty about this, or about their significance. In the Middle Ages, as a common form of punishment, convicted murderers were forced to carve large crosses from granite at the site of their crimes.