Strategies for enhancing Portugal's bone chapels as a potential cultural route
Abstract
This article focuses on the case study of Portugal´s Bone Chapels, built within a temporal delimitation from the 17th century to the 19th century – as a potential Cultural Route.
The nine examples that still stand in the national territory, constitute a type of religious architecture that, due to their geographical location - all in the south of the territory, concentrate, in a joint articulated vision, a tourist potential as a Cultural Route, which will be explored in this investigation.
For the majority of Portuguese examples, which constitute transformed spaces for cultural tourism purposes, some strategies will be proposed that these spaces may adopt to enhance their use in an aspect (cultural and heritage protection), which assumes increasing importance in the world today. Accordingly, some digital educational products will be proposed, integrating, among others, the route, and audio guides for each of the Bone Chapels, to be made available in the properties and on the Cultural Route website, in an articulated and networked strategy of the nine architectures.
Finally, taking into account that the Bone Chapels constitute a type of religious architecture that is not exclusive to this country, we will present the geographic preponderance of these cases on an international level, to understand the geographic scale of this cultural heritage. We will evaluate the possibility of creating an international cultural route of these architectures, using as an example of success - the European Cemeteries Route, one of the Council of Europe's Cultural Itineraries.
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