The Management and Productive Use of Cultural and Religious Routes

Religious itineraries and pilgrimage routes can be seen as a means of sharing ethical and religious values and feelings of peace and brotherhood, but also as a factor driving local sustainable development, following the proposal for sustainable tourism contained in the European Agenda 2030.This strong potential needs to be fully taken into account in their management, providing a range of services that facilitates the use of the routes and their associated cultural heritage, This requires adequate planning, considering a market that is conditioned by multiple interests and interactions within the groups involved and in which many different categories of subject – secular and religious, public and private – operate. After a brief analysis of the role and meaning of cultural and religious itineraries, this paper focuses on the processes associated with their management and the promotion of tourism that maintains respect for the religious meaning of the places. It describes a brief Marian route in the district of Harghita in Transylvania, in the hope that it can make an important contribution to the promotion of the European Via Mariae (Way of Mary) and help Europe to rediscover in “Marian values”, as with all the European cultural itineraries, the true and profound sense of tradition as an element of dialogue, understanding and reconciliation.