Priority Area 3 – Culture & Tourism targets this kind of aspects: to preserve ad promote the culture and historical heritage in the Danube Region. There are many projects financed from EU programmes or from national budgets that aim to this target, too.

To understand the nations, peoples and their cultures which are adjacent to each other it is necessary to know the cultural heritage, habits and traditions first. Only then can they live in peace and respect each other. This is very important mainly for future generations.

The cross-national collaboration and presentation of cultural heritage need to be set up. Some habits and traditions or other heritage are very similar and those can start to act as an initiating element in establishing cooperation, comprehension and development.

The following story presents you DANUrB, a regional network building through tourism and education to strengthen the “Danube” cultural identity and solidarity.

Financed from the Danube Transnational Programme, DANUrB’s mainly activities aim at fostering transnational cultural ties between the settlements along the Danube, and by exploring the unused or hidden cultural and social capital resources for a better economic and cultural return.

How did the project team do it?

By mapping the Danube cultural heritage and evaluating its potential for specific sites, locals and transnational tourism development unified into one tourism destination brand. By connecting people from twin-cities (it means cities on different banks and in different countries) aiming to understand the particularities, different and common specifics, due to a concept of Danube Day festivals. By using the Pocket Guide application, which provide the user a great choice of thematic routes, promoting the local cultural heritage, supporting the tourism industry, local stakeholders and increasing the number of visitors and their stay in the region. And the Pocket Guide application proved its usefulness since about 750,000 users accessed it.

One of the main outputs of DANUrB represent the publication titled – Book on the Unexplored Cultural Heritage in Communities by the Danube.

The travelling Exhibition promoting DANUrB and local specifics of 7 countries along the Danube river attracted about 1,200 visitors in total in 7 countries and 14 cities. The Travelling Exhibition is an essence of the research and experience of the involvement of locals: the main message is to show through everyday topics that Danube is one region. The main topics are education of children, sounds of the Danube, people and community, future plans, gastronomy and literature.

In accordance with the project, the aim of the series of events ‘Danube Days’ was drawing attention to local cultural values and heritage by linking existing programs and fostering further co-operation, highlighting the benefits of riverside living and encouraging local communities to actively use riverbanks as public spaces. The promotion of the events attracted a large number of visitors of the Danube Days festivals, for example, approx. 300 visitors per year in Štúrovo/ Esztergom. More than 500 children participated in the DANUrB Kids Day 2019 (Vidin / Calafat) enjoying themselves by painting, making origami, playing boarding games, dancing etc. Special gastronomy exposition was introduced by presenting a variety of local food.

A network based on collaboration of the locals and their common heritage, a network which fosters tourism development, economy, education and enriches the cultural life was created during the implementation of the project.