On 5 October the project was featured at the session on the exchange of best practices at the Forum on Cultural Routes  – the annual event bringing together all the stakeholders from the culture, tourism and sustainable development focused on cultural routes.   

The Forum was hosted by the city of Chania, on the island of Crete, on 5 – 7 October 2022 and welcomed more than 400 international participants, uniting the ministers of culture and representatives of ministries of culture and tourism and national tourism boards from 37 member states of the Enlarged Partial Agreement on Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe, 48 cultural routes and candidate routes and private stakeholders. International organisations, such as European Union, UNESCO, OECD, BSEC, OEI, observers to the programme, were actively contributing to the event.   

Celebrating the 35th anniversary of the Programme of cultural routes, this year’s forum was titled “Cultural routes of the Council of Europe: safeguarding European values, heritage, dialogue”. Elena Dubinina, from the EAVF international relations and EU project and rurAllure communication team leader, presented rurAllure as the best practice of European cooperation to 48 cultural routes, stressing the importance of digitalisation for heritage and collaboration between thematic routes.  

Luca Bruschi, the EAVF director, featured rurAllure in his speech in the thematic session on safeguarding cultural heritage, focusing on challenges for the protection of cultural heritage and the development of sustainable tourism strategies.  

During the forum, the ruAllure team reinforced relationships with project partners and associate partners – Via Romea Germanica, Via Romea Strata, St Olav Ways, Route of Historic Thermal Towns, Camino de Santiago and Tourism of Galicia and other routes potentially interested to join the project. The event also served to meet the representatives of ministries and national tourism boards to spread the results of the project.