Memory Resilience and Sustainability: When Tourism and Art Meet in Byzantium

Byzantine heritage is widespread and multidimensional, with evidence in churches, houses, buildings, trails and memorabilia from the north to the south of Italy. Tourists seek this heritage at the same time as citizens and communities. Both the resilience and sustainability of this memory need strategies. Promotion and fundraising of these heritages are developed thanks to networks which stem from public–private partnerships and engage different stakeholders. Philanthropic stakeholders can be public administrations, donors, sponsors and grant-making foundations. The objective of this paper is to analyze how contents of the Byzantine memory can attract philanthropy of grant-making foundations, who are interested not only in the restoration of these heritages, but also that their creative contents are re-opened and delivered to citizens, national and international tourists. This research is focused on kinds of collaborations between foundations of banking origin and the byzantine heritage in Italy, from pure co-marketing to partnerships. Kinds of collaborations were investigated in reports of grant-making foundations above all with consideration of partnerships among several foundations and public and private stakeholders. Public, private and tourists’ spending for culture has been growing with the philanthropy of these foundations and their partnerships for more than a decade.