Europejskie Szlaki Kulturowe Rady Europy

At the end of the 1980s, the Council of Europe began to implement the Project called The European Cultural Routes which aimed at making Europeans aware of their cultural identity, preserving and protecting the heritage, giving special meaning to places connected with cultural tourism considering the principles of sustainable tourism, granting special priority to cultural tourism among other ways of spending free time and, last but not least, promoting European culture in its broad sense. The author describes the detailed procedure of creating routes and their themes which are presented in three groups – People, Migrations and Spreading of the main European trends in the fields of philosophy, art, religion, science, engineering and trade. Currently, more than 20 European Cultural Routes exist, with the special attention focused on “the Legacy of Al-Andalus” cultural route – the route established on the territory of Spain, and the countries of northern Africa and South America.