EU funding has been conditionally approved for a new cross border project aimed at promoting tourism to Europe’s historic Jewish quarters. The project comes under the Interreg programs, as did an earlier cross border project, Rediscover, that also promoted the development of Jewish heritage tourism in the Danube region.
The new project, called Jewish heritage as leverage for sustainable tourism, involves seven civic authorities or NGOs, with the municipality of Ferrara, Italy — which developed the project with input from the local Jewish community — taking the lead.
According to the Ferrara municipality, the total budget for the four-year project is €2,333,979 of which EU funds for regional development will cover €1,841,645.
“The project aims to develop an integrated action plan to unleash the touristic potential of [historic] Jewish Ghettos, thus supporting a better cohesion transnational cooperation strategy through the activation of a Jewish Cultural Heritage (JCH) valorisation model,” the project descriptions states.
Jewish Quarters (Ghettos) are a crucial element in the history of European urbanism and in the narrative of European memory. The development of off-the-beaten-track and special interest tourism plays an important and quite innovative role in creating synergies among EU cities which incorporate such peculiar areas in their urban tissue.
The other participating bodies are: the municipality of Erfurt, Germany (whose medieval Jewish heritage was recently added to UNESCO’s world heritage list); the municipality of Coimbra, Portugal; the municipality of Lublin, Poland; the Grodzka Gate Theatre NN for the promotion of Jewish cultural heritage in Lublin; the Development Agency, Riga, Latvia; the Tourism Academy, Breda, Netherlands; and the Amsterdam-based Jewish Heritage Network, which focuses on digital strategies for promoting Jewish heritage. Associated partners include the Emilia Romagna region and the Center of Portugal regional tourism board.
According to the Ferrara municipality web site, the project
will see a series of exchanges of good practices and the testing of new actions or improvements to existing initiatives, also through digital technologies and innovative approaches. Each partner will be asked to integrate the project results into their own planning and management tools, with particular attention to investment strategies for growth and work.
In Ferrara for example, it said, a pilot project will be developed to promote the “visible and invisible” cultural heritage, using augmented and immersive reality programs to create virtual tours inside the historic buildings of the ghetto that are now private homes and therefore not accessible.
The objective is to show citizens and tourists the ‘invisible’ cultural heritage preserved in the Ghetto, guaranteeing the visitor the possibility of completing the visit through the streets of the Ghetto with virtual access to places, memories, archives and narratives, remained inaccessible for decades.
Ferrara has a centuries-old Jewish presence and a small active Jewish community. A building in the historic ghetto area includes three synagogues and a small Jewish community museum.
The city is also home to Italy’s National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah in another location.
See the statement on the Municipality web site