Various international institutions, among which mainly the Council of Europe, were concerned to answer the contradictions related to cultural tourism by developing strategies and broad topics that support cultural cohesion and the pluralism of cultures.

With this intention, the idea of the cultural routes made its way little by little. This portal retrieves in all the fields it explores the history and the effects of the programme developed by the Council of Europe and run by the Institute since 1997. However, we should not forget the initiatives of other institutions.

to travel ?

In 1990 Jean d'Ormesson presented with his well-known elegance a brief history of the voyage at a meeting of the programme of the "Silk Roads". He first of all quotes the writers who preferred to travel in their room ("Celine has a way of expressing himself a little brutally: he speaks about the voyage as "small giddiness for assholes". And still Montherlant, whom you will recognise at once, has this decisive argument: "voyages are imbecile; the best proof is that girls like to travel"). But he turns very quickly to Baudelaire, who demanded that one add to the basic rights: the right to contradict oneself and the right to go away. And, he specifies: "the other category is those who, like the Venetians, belong to a territory small in surface but large through voyages. One could say that the Empire of Venice rests from the start on voyages. And when one speaks about voyage, one also naturally speaks about roads."

unesco

Silk route. Photo B. Dupaigne

Taking also into account the way in which historical meetings and migrations moulded contemporary societies, UNESCO launched programmes related to roads that connected the people of the world. It refers to the "Silk Road" between the East and the West, the "Slave Road", which had a major importance in the history of Africa and the Americas, the "Iron Road" in Africa, which contributed to forging the cultures of this continent and finally the "Roads of Faith", which led three of the great religions of the world to Jerusalem. Another programme treated the "Spaces of the Baroque", while UNESCO also recognised the importance of the "Roads of the Al-Andalousi Heritage" between Europe, the Arab world and black Africa.

"The Silk Roads", terrestrial and maritime, were par excellence, like the ways of pilgrimages, roads of a dialogue of civilisations. Jean d'Ormesson affirms: "Oh well, it seems to me that what constitutes them are the passions of men, and I believe that a study of voyages and a study of the silk roads is initially a study of human passions." These roads, whose trace has been kept by history for over two millennia, contributed a considerable share to the development of human civilisation on both cultural and commercial levels. Thus the western door of the city of Xian, capital of China since the Han dynasty, opened directly on to the distant countries of the West, from where there arrived not only innumerable trade products, but also new ideas. Thanks to these roads, the countries of the Orient and the Occident profited from exchanges of information, such as a mixing of religions. These influences, as the Director of the project, Doudou Diene, indicates, relate both to "the propagation of Buddhism, Islam or Christianity, from East to West and vice versa, the use of Chinese varnishes by old Arab potters, seduced by the fine blue and white porcelain that came to them from the East by sea, and to the admiration caused in all the East by the Roman techniques of glassmaking, or finally the adoption, by the Greeks as well as the Chinese, of medical knowledge and Indian surgical techniques." The project, which developed from 1987 to 1997, constituted one of the most precious elements of the cultural decade of the Organisation and it enabled subsequent collaboration with the Council of Europe.

The project "Spaces of the Baroque", also carried out partly in collaboration with the Council of Europe, was launched at the beginning of the nineties as an intercultural bridge among people, on both sides of the Atlantic and up to certain towns of Asia. It invited researchers to reflect on the conditions of the meeting of cultures and of symbioses that occurred between the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries in very many countries, and it resulted in publications.

The programme of the "Slave Road" was inaugurated in September 1994 in Ouidah in Benin, one of the oldest revolving doors in slave commerce in the Gulf of Guinea. Its objectives are multiple. It is a question of supporting research, publications and cultural activities concerning the Atlantic commerce, of counting and preserving files, of constituting databases, of promoting the improvement of school material, of establishing networks of researchers, and of supporting the development of the principal sites and of cultural tourism. But, beyond this analysis, it is still essential to reflect on what Doudou Diene, responsible for this project as well, calls "a founding act of civilisation". It is indeed in America, in the Caribbean and the Antilles, where interbreeding started, that the cultural effects of slave commerce are most tangible. One must even take into account that the cultural products of this interbreeding, in the form of jazz, reggae or rap, return to irrigate the culture of the European continent, the place of origin of triangular trade, of which the town of Nantes reminded us in an exhibit entitled: "Rings of Memory".

other european routes

The European Union also encouraged certain significant initiatives, in particular during the European year of tourism in 1992. It is the case, for example, of Via Romana, launched by the International Tourism Alliance. This pan-European project has as subject the Romans and their successors. The route begins in Italy to lead to the Netherlands, while crossing France, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium, with incursions into Spain and the United Kingdom. It seeks to inter-connect the existing routes of cultural tourism, while also integrating the Roman archaeological sites. The way was selected so as to facilitate later on a connection with the Roman ways of Austria, Greece, Portugal and Switzerland.

Many initiatives helped by the Commission also relate to the wine trails between Germany, Greece, Spain, France, Italy and Portugal, or those of beer between France and Belgium. Others seek to develop routes marking a return to sources, towards cities that were at the origin of the phenomena of emigration to America. These "Routes to the roots" started to be set up in Germany. Finally, certain projects helped by the Raphaël programme took into account the "European cultural paths" around the bronze age, after the Campaign of the Council of Europe on the subject.