Cultural Routes Research Articles

The potential of defensive architectural heritage as a resource for proposing cultural itineraries

PurposeHeritage landmarks and historical values often coexist with places and regions of remarkable environmental and landscape wealth. This article studies their capacity to generate global understanding of their territory through the creation of cultural routes. The proposed methodology is verified through the study of the defensive features of the ancient Nasrid Kingdom, the last Islamic territory in the Iberian Peninsula from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, which shaped the Spanish region known as the Kingdom of Granada until the nineteenth century.Design/methodology/approachTo assist in the proposal of new routes, a precise collection of physical data (topography, landmarks, resources, population centres …), existing public paths and protected natural sites was carried out. Those cultural routes relevant to the area of study were also selected and mapped through GIS. A set of indicators prioritised through an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) have evaluated the proposed itineraries.FindingsThe methodology enables the integral evaluation of parameters such as natural heritage, existing paths networks, defensive architectural heritage (watchtowers), existing cultural routes or proximity to basic services. The methodology's application allows an index to be obtained that quantifies the global implications of these parameters in the design of new itineraries. This leads to the development of a network with its own narrative that provides a historical, environmental and cultural meaning.Originality/valueWatchtowers in this region have previously been studied as isolated and locally relevant architectural features. This work studies them from an overall perspective, considering each tower as a piece of a complex defensive and territorial system. Cultural routes arise from this joint interpretation as tools to restore and highlight the interrelationship between architectural heritage and territory and people.

The transhumance route of Pithoragarh: A cultural route?

A cultural route represents a spatial link between different cultural groups, which co-influenced their mutual development, also enriched their relationship with the natural environment, resulting in a vast body of knowledge. First recognized on a world platform in 1993 by UNESCO, the concept is on its evolutionary stage, and there are several developing viewpoints expressed on its meaning and constituents. However, the small-scale routes with predominantly intangible characters are overlooked in discussion compared to the large expanse, trans-national routes that possess a significant amount of tangible resources. As a preliminary step in this endeavor of recognizing local routes with intangible aspects, the paper attempts to analyze the transhumance route of Pithoragarh, India, and explore the possibilities of the route being identified as a Cultural Route. It adopts a qualitative, ethnographic research approach for investigating the route and the associated Johar, Darma, Chaudans, and Byans valley and collects data through semi-structured interviews with experts and community members. The results indicate that the routes connected the highlands with the lowlands and created a vertical model that facilitated constant movement, brought together many cultures, and enabled fluid socio-cultural and economic interactions. It suggests that a richer understanding of the cultural assets could emerge by exploring the route's significance as a 'cultural route' and with further in-depth investigation, it can qualify to be recognized and protected as a cultural route.

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Possibility of using a portable multi-gas detector Dräger X-am 8000 for monitoring explosive gases in the area of historical oil and gas mines in the Podkarpackie region.

The oldest oil basin in the world is located in the Polish Carpathians. Former mines, often abandoned, have become technical monuments. The growing popularity of industrial tourism in the world and in Poland attracts more and more tourists who want to "find oil" on their own. In most cases, these are abandoned crude oil and natural gas mines, being in such places is associated with the risk of poisoning, ignition or explosion of escaping gases from unprotected crude oil mines or borehole outlets. The article also points to the heritage of oil mining in the Polish Carpathians and related cultural routes. The author focuses on the issue related to the occurrence of the hazard zone of hydrogen sulphide poisoning or methane explosion in the sites of old oil mines. It presents the possibility of using the mobile multi-gas detector Dräger X-am 8000 as a personal device for monitoring the concentration of gases and vapours considered toxic and / or explosive, such as Methane or Hydrogen Sulfide. It also proposes the use of the Dräger X-am 8000 multi-gas detector, which in combination with the Dräger X-site Live real-time area monitoring module can serve as a mobile system for short- or long-term monitoring of the above-mentioned zones.

A STUDY ON THE SPATIAL INTERPRETATION STRATEGY OF CHANG'AN CITY SITE OF TANG DYNASTY: FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF CULTURAL ROUTES INTERPRETATION

Abstract. Chang'an is the starting point of "Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor", which was listed as World Heritage in 2014. Based on the practice and exploration of presentation of the Chang'an City Site of Tang Dynasty in Xi'an, this paper presents a discussion of how to combine the interpretation of cultural routes with the interpretation and presentation of the urban traces under a modern city. Under the pressure of urban development and renewal, it explores the interpretation strategies based on cultural routes, trying to solve the contradictions between the needs of potential heritage conservation and urban development. Moreover, the paper explores contradictions between meanings and values arising among approaches to heritage sites in relation to the urban role as a starting point of the Silk Road. Focusing on the need to actively integrate potential underground ruins into the development plan of the city, the paper extends the notion of "setting" to include the historic urban context and their structuring components. Integrating archaeological and literature materials and based on the heritage value of Chang'an City of Tang Dynasty in the cultural route, the paper attempts to sort out the relationship of inheritance and continuity between the underground city and the modern city patterns. It is argued that such kind of sorting is a key task for spatial interpretation. Furthermore, the spatial interpretation-based strategy for potential sites is recommended as the tool to explore the guiding principles of urban cultural heritage interpretation and land use co-development.

Connecting the Archaeological Site of Italica (Spain) to its Landscape: A Three-Step Method to Unveil and Enhance Landscape Values through the Design of Cultural Routes

ABSTRACT The intricate character of the landscape is one of the main difficulties when reaching an agreement on its values. This information is, however, essential to manage the landscape, a process which relies on methodologies that recognise those values and/or identifies. In this paper, the analytical methodology for an integrated plan of the territory is reviewed, and a method is presented to design cultural routes as a strategy for connecting the archaeological sites to their landscapes by restoring the dynamics of landscape formation in their immediate environments. Using the area surrounding the archaeological site of the Roman city of Italica in Andalusia (Spain) as a case study, actions and processes are identified that can enable projects based on ‘cultural routes’ to restore the dynamics of landscape formation, highlighting those processes that allow us to recognise the landscape values and to extract some of the landscape’s characteristic features.

THE ENHANCEMENT OF CULTURAL TOURISM ROUTES IN THE LANNA REGION OF NORTHERN THAILAND

The Lanna region is a former kingdom in the area of modern-day Northern Thailand that also once extended into Myanmar, Laos and China. Currently, Lanna culture is used as a selling point for tourism to Northern Thailand, but there are problems with the way tourism routes are designed and packaged. This paper aims to promote the architectural value of Lanna culture through the development of tourism routes. The qualitative investigation assesses existing Lanna tourist routes in Northern Thailand and develops guidelines for the development of cultural tourism in the region. Initial research led to the identification of 35 sites for in-depth evaluation. Data was gathered by document research, field evaluation and interviews following criteria co-developed by Chulalongkorn University and the Department of Tourism (2007). Findings indicated that destinations in Northern Thailand are of a good standard but should be developed in terms of tourism support and management. The researchers produced guidelines for the development of individual attractions and designed cultural routes according to provincial boundaries and periodic themes.

Distribution and Integration of Military Settlements’ Cultural Heritage in the Large Pass City of the Great Wall in the Ming Dynasty: A Case Study of Juyong Pass Defense Area

The Great Wall of China is more than a wall: it is an extensive cultural route. Pass cities, which are usually large defensive fortresses overseeing an entire fortified area, are an essential part of this heritage and are at the core of the Great Wall’s defense system. Juyong Pass was the closest Pass city to Beijing during the Ming Dynasty when the Great Wall reached its peak. It consisted of five regions—south, east, north, west, and central—that form three fortification levels: core castle, Bao city, and End facility. Based on the Juyong defense area military settlements database, this paper applied spatial analysis methods and found that more than half of the military’s resources for the whole defense area were focused on the western part of the wall, which formed another military core alongside Juyong Pass city. However, the current conservation strategy only focuses on Juyong Pass itself, neglecting the settlements in the western part, thereby destroying the integrity of the Great Wall’s heritage. By clarifying the distribution of cultural heritage in this area, we hope to encourage the preservation of many fortifications according to their authentic historical sphere of control and provide a reference for the sustainable integration of resources along the significant cultural routes of the Great Wall.

Food and Religion in Sicily—A New Green Tourist Destination by an Ancient Route from the Past

The Francigena Way (Via Francigena) is a long international itinerary that was awarded recognition as a Culture Route of the Council of Europe. It starts in Canterbury (UK), touches 13 European regions and ends in Rome. An ancient track of this route is in Sicily (Southern Italy), and its name is Magna Via Francigena (Great Francigena Way). This track is a pilgrimage route that connects two ancient port cities, Palermo and Agrigento, passing through internal rural territories that now deal with the exodus of population from rural to urban areas. The route passes through the Sicilian territory named “Upper-Belìce corleonese”, a rural area around the city of Corleone (a little village known worldwide for the sad Mafia events) that includes a number of municipalities. In the past, this religious pilgrimage was a fundamental part of the expression of faith for Christians and now still represents for Sicilians a strong symbol of Christian identity. In recent decades, pilgrimage tourism around the world has grown significantly each year. The aim of the study is to know the pilgrims’ motivations for choosing the Magna Via Francigena pilgrimage as a vacation and any possible similarities between pilgrimage tourism and food and wine tourism, in the wider context of sustainable and slow tourism. The Policy Delphi method was applied to collect the opinions of the stakeholders involved. The study highlighted the strong link between religious motivations and local enogastronomy, culture, art and nature. Results will support policy-making in the development of integrated territorial tourist marketing strategies.

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A gentler structure to life: co-creation in branding a cultural route

The study explores how a cultural route supports the identity of a place. The study applies co-creative and identity-based place-branding theory and advances research on the significant role of culture when various actors identify with the brand of a place. Moreover, cultural sustainability is seen as a form of meta-narrative that frames the symbiosis of a place brand and its cultural values. Contributing to the previous research on branding a cultural route, this study discusses the value of a person (an architect) to the branding of a cultural route. The study also contributes to place-branding theory by linking the discourse on architectural heritage and branding an emerging cultural route. We used a single and critical case approach focusing on one of the sites representing a group of cities involved in the branding of the Alvar Aalto cultural route. Various qualitative research methods including interviews and publicly available material were utilized. The study presents empirical findings on branding an emergent cultural route. As a key theoretical contribution, the study shows how the culture and image of an individual site are expressed in the cohesive brand identity of that cultural route. Communication and co-creation are revealed to be prerequisites of efficient collaboration.

Cultural Tourism in Nitra, Slovakia: Overview of Current and Future Trends

Cultural tourism has undergone fundamental changes in several countries of post-socialist Europe. In Slovakia, this fact concerns, for example, localities with a strong connection to the church and its cultural heritage. These monuments belong to the foundations of cultural tourism, yet the state intentionally did not prefer them as tourist destinations until 1989. Only after political and social changes were such localities exploited by tourism with a qualitative and quantitative increase in cultural tourism. The aim of this paper is to investigate the recent changes in cultural tourism in urban areas and to address alternative cultural tourism products to diversify the offerings. To do so, Nitra (Slovakia) was used as a case study area. The main used methods were comparative analysis of information sources and questionnaire surveys, aimed at residents, entrepreneurs, and tourists. The main result is that Nitra has the potential to become an important center of cultural tourism/stage destination of various cultural routes. The presented results will increase awareness of the present and future of cultural tourism; they can be beneficial for organizations dealing with tourism management in the city (city office) and its marketing (Nitra Tourism Organization) for the academic and public sphere.

Geopolitics in the Heritage: The Cultural Routes of Silk Roads

In this study, Wang proposes to study the new spatiality of heritagization through institutional territory, which examines how particular norm and identity is assembled by a constant (re-)configuration of people-things-place relationship (cite Adam A. Smith). Special attention will be paid to the agency of forming specific relations that holds the elements together: first, the complexity of actants in this process and their distributed agency and second, how these distributed agency were channeled to across borders and territorialised to form an arrangement of heterogenous elements that gives a degree of consistency to the overall identity.

Intention to visit a destination from the perspective of Broken Windows theory

Tourism activities inherently require safe and secure environments. The Broken Windows Theory puts forward the notion that, in time, small-scale disorders in the region transform into major crimes. These disorders could also hinder tourism activities by paving the way for the convenient condition of crime and creating fear of offense among prospective visitors. In this study, Kadifekale in the province of İzmir which has the potential of being part of a cultural route is evaluated through the Broken Windows Theory. Within the scope of this study, the physical and social disorder around the castle, fear of crime, and fear of visit were investigated through Partial Least Squares based Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) to reveal whether they have impacts on the intention to visit and recommendation. Fear of visit which is predominantly shaped by perceived disorders and fear of crime causes negative impacts on the intentions of potential tourists.

Transnational Serial Architectural Heritage in Turkey: Traces of the Roman Empire via Egnatia

The term “Transnational Serial Property” generally refers to expansive World Heritage sites, which extend across the territory of two or three UNESCO Convention member states. Transnational serial properties provide various cultural and natural qualities as well as a number of local, regional and national series of nominations in World Heritage. Serial Nominations consist of more components that developed jointly in cultural connections. Each individual element is not only in unique universal value, but also the series as whole have the cultural integrity. However, in today’s world, the speed of globalization creates severe problems on World Heritage areas such that the current trends unfortunately suggest an increasing depreciation through existing cultural heritage. There are numerous potential Transnational Serial World Heritage properties in Turkey, many of existing cultural routes. At this point, by highlighting the need for re-evaluation of traces of the Roman Empire as a Transnational Serial architectural heritage, this paper explains the critical discussion of World Heritage areas which should be evaluated as a Serial Transnational Architectural Heritage. An example of this is the Via Egnatia, a road constructed by the Romans in the 2nd century BC, was the first Roman highway to be built east of the Adriatic. It passes through the Roman provinces of Illyricum, Macedonia, and Thrace, running through territory that is now part of modern Albania, the Republic of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey. The research study aims to provide a framework for the Transnational Serial World Heritage properties in general and mainly focuses on traces of the Roman Empire and cultural routes. Within the context of the cultural routes, Via Egnatia and the need for evaluation as a serial hybrid heritage by concerning preservation of historical, archeological and other values will be discussed. Connected to the information gathered, the paper finalized with a summary on Transnational Serial Nomination system and the transformation of the historical road as a cultural and communicational connection from past to present.

Innovative Perspectives to Apply Blockchain Model for the Saints Cyril and Methodius and Saint Sophronius of Vratsa Historical Sights in the Context of European Cultural Routes

Innovative Perspectives to Apply Blockchain Model for the Saints Cyril and Methodius and Saint Sophronius of Vratsa Historical Sights in the Context of European Cultural Routes

The development of Cultural Tourism Route in 3 Southern Borders of Thailand to Support Muslim Travelers

The objectives of this study were to study 1. The needs of cultural tourism in 3 southern borders of Thailand 2. To create cultural tourism route in 3 southern borders of Thailand to support Muslim Indonesian Tourist 3. To evaluate Muslim Indonesian Tourist’s satisfaction of cultural tourism route in 3 southern borders of Thailand. Using Semi-structure interview a group of 6 people to find the need of traveling. Selected the cultural tourist attractions with the potential of Muslim Indonesian tourist’s need for establishing cultural tourism route in 3 southern borders of Thailand. Tourism activities on this route has been tested to analyze and evaluate the potential of the route. Measured tourists’ satisfaction by in-depth interview. The study result showed that most of Muslim Indonesian tourists wanted to visit 3 southern borders of Thailand for cultural reasons due to halal approachability, multi-cultural reasons, Culture and historical linked of their own and want to learn about Thai Muslim way of life. The formation of tourism route conducted by selecting cultural tourist attractions with the potential of Muslim Indonesian tourist’s need these include: religious place, ancient remains, local market, local museum and religious institution (Pondak). The evaluation of satisfaction showed that all 10 tourists satisfied with the route and suggested that primary facilities should be developed. Cultural tourism route should be systematically publicized. The result of this study will be the key information for all nations to use in their marketing to attract Muslim Indonesian and Muslim travelers around the world.

Promoting Palaeontological Heritage of Mammoths in Serbia Through a Cross-Country Thematic Route

Interpretation of paleontological heritage of mammoths is an important factor for the development of tourism in Serbia. Most fossil remains of mammoths are found in a unique geological environment, indicating the significant tourist value of these sites. The principal aim of this paper is to emphasize the tourism potential and geoconservation values of mammoth fossils throughout Serbia. These fossil remains provide an excellent basis for establishing the first ever mammoth route in Serbia. The route stretches from the city of Kikinda in the north to the city of Jagodina in the south, encompassing the basins of three major rivers, the Danube, Tisa, and Morava River. Throughout history, these rivers have been a place where different cultures have flourished over a long period of time. Also, many prehistoric animals such as mammoths and other species inhabited these areas continuously for nearly a million years. The current state and tourism potential of the selected mammoth sites were evaluated by using the CREM (Cultural Route Evaluation Model). The application of this methodology will provide us with crucial information for future route development and help us identify which areas and sites require more attention as well as identify the major fields for improvement at each mammoth site in order to attract a larger number of tourists in the future.

Individual and social marketing in cultural routes operation

Individual and social marketing in cultural routes operation

LIVING DANUBE LIMES – SPAȚIUL CONSTRUIT CA INSTRUMENT PENTRU RETRĂIREA ISTORIEI

The theme of exploring the built space as tool for living history is part of the project that UAUIM is involved in as partner: “Living Danube Limes - Valorising cultural heritage and fostering sustainable tourism by LIVING the common heritage on the DANUBE LIMES as basis for a Cultural Route”, from the Danube Transnational Programme. The project proposes a contemporary experience on the Roman historical frontier along Danube, that contains, on the Romanian territory, a large number of archaeological sites, many of them still not explored or inaccessible. The Danube Limes could become a new Cultural Route in Europe, in a larger network of frontier systems, from Hadrian’s Wall in Great Britain, till the Northern parts of Africa and the Near East. The Danube Limes represents paradoxically, in the same time, a strong territorial limit, but also an important connection element for Europe. The first part of the research discloses the relationship at a territorial level, at different scales, between the historical sites and natural and anthropic features, in order to configure the future Cultural Route in Romania. A fully reconstructed Roman boat from the IVth century will sail along Danube till the Black Sea. Along the route, several areas and archaeological sites were identified in order to host projects, architectural, urban and territorial interventions as basis for living history scenarios. From iconic urban and architectural interventions, next to the archaeological sites, to new harbours, to the Wine Road, thermal settlements, or in the end, the final point of exile, where the Danube reaches the Black Sea, the projects developed by the Department of Architectural Synthesis, propose living history steps through functions and built spaces that reconstruct scenarios from the Roman life. The contemporary built space enhances the discovery and revival of history and becomes a tool for the Living History concept.