Efficiency of Cultural Routes: Between Wish and Reality

The fruitful conjugation of two factors (Romania’s EU accession on 1 January 2007 and the fact that there is a large number of cultural and tourist landmarks in Dobrudja) led to the implementation of various national or cross-border cultural and tourist programmes. Museum of National History and Archeology, Constanta, depositary of a valuable cultural heritage, was partner in numerous such projects, among which a significant part was dedicated to promoting various national or cross-border cultural routes. Despite the generous and comprehensive concept, many of these cultural routes have fallen into oblivion, soon after the project was finished. We may mention here routes that included religious landmarks, art monuments or historic and archaeological monuments, many of them being unique in the country or in SE Europe (Roman Edifice with Mosaic in Constanta, the Monastic Cave Complex from Basarabi-Murfatlar, Triumphal Monument at Adamclisi). Most of the projects implemented in Dobrudja, either with European or with national funding, were based almost exclusively on promoting the cultural and natural heritage and not on finding solutions to the fundamental problems of this region. Present paper aims to identify the causes of this situation and possible solutions to revitalize these cultural routes in order to achieve the initial goals: promoting the historic and archaeological heritage and increasing the benefits for local communities. For an efficient tourism, it is not enough to create mere touristic routes, to highlight points of interest on a map, as long as the reality on the ground does not meet the expectations of the ones interested. Discovery of monuments and points of interest have a positive effect only as long as a contribution it is made to their preservation and protection. In this case, it does not suffice only to promote, but also to preserve the cultural heritage for sustainable exploitation from a cultural, touristic and economic point of view. As curators, we have approached this case study by observing the contribution of historic and archaeological landmarks on the efficiency of this type of projects. In order to do so, we have collected data about the 16 cultural projects, in which our institution was involved, either as applicant, partner or just subject of the project.