Since 1997, the European Institute of Cultural Routes, with the assistance of Europeans in charge of tourism, assembled a wide range of documentation on Europe, including Central and Eastern European countries open to visitors. We regularly collaborated with publishers to explore broad topics: pilgrimage ways, parks and gardens, textiles, the Great Region... and every week the newsletters of the Institute propose the discovery of ignored heritages and of new thematic trails.

to build europe while travelling

Chartres cathedral, 1929. Photo Charles Sheeler. Museum of Fine Arts Boston

Parallel to economic and political construction, which is one of the means of integration, raising the awareness of a continent that sometimes gives the impression of both seeking its unity and of splitting up, underlines the importance of voyage. It allows the practice of a multicultural European identity and a concrete sharing of its values by the citizens.

The idea of enabling Europeans to rediscover, in their spare time, a tourist cultural practice turned towards great transborder, even continental, routes, which influenced the history of cultural relations and which for centuries supported exchanges and blending, imposes itself upon our contemporaries as one of the "instruments of cultural action and free movement of ideas and people".

Europeans have always been fascinated by voyage, by the spirit of discovery and conquest. This attraction very naturally went towards the exterior of Europe. As Andrei Pleşu writes: "the topic of the magic far-away, of the attractive otherness, constitutes - for the European world - a determining topic, a structuring reference mark. From Greek navigators to Christopher Columbus, from Magellan to Thor Heyerdahl, we witness a perpetual offensive of a continent, directed towards others. The case is unique."

But, of course, apart from these horizons of conquest, they also moved towards continental horizons. The Christians who traversed the European pilgrimage roads were sensitive to the discovery of the cultural richness of the kingdom they crossed. Their accounts encouraged the following generations to travel to discover Europe: the famous Grand Tour of several generations of English and Germans or, in France, voyages modelled on that of Montaigne in Italy. His Journal, or similar works entitled Itinerarium, Deliciae, Diary, testify to the interest in discovering the south of Europe.

For about twenty years now, one has witnessed the appearance of a new tendency in tourist practice, oriented towards what economists called "cultural tourism". A new practice in the sense that it replaces part of the mass tourism of the sixties. But it is in fact only one manner of rejoining the past of the European initiatory course.

In compared tourist market research, culture thus seems to occupy a significant place again. It is even regarded as an "obligatory component of new tourism and it is essential as an axis of diversification of European destinations" (Robert Lanquar).

It is this phenomenon of rediscovery of Europe by Europeans, taken into account on the whole of the continent, that we wish to explore and to translate through proposals that we hope will become concrete voyages for the visitors of our site, after having been so for us.

a domain to explore

This domain of the portal of the Institute thus presents two entry ways, intended for two categories of public. It is addressed to curious visitors and to specialised tourist operators.	Contemporary pilgrim, 1997. Photo Jean-Marie Freund
Francfort's airport, 2002. Photo MTP	For those who wish to discover Europe, it proposes course topics, virtual routes that represent as many guiding threads: pilgrimages, gardens, textiles, the baroque... while trying on each page to leave the known paths, to offer historical and literary reference marks. In addition, it allows our subscribers to prepare a voyage concretely thanks to the rubric "knowing more" and to find addresses, articles, documents, news, and proposals of tour operators.

For tourist operators and professionals in this sector, it offers the relevance of the reflection of European institutions with regard to cultural tourism. But it also proposes to subscribing professionals the possibility of thorough information retrieval starting from a database of new destinations to explore, voyages to build, potential partners in Europe...