Art – culture – tourism is the frame of our trans-national project “Danube Culture Platform – Creative Space for the 21st Century” within the guidebook on resourcing hidden heritage for tourism is produced. This study “Our Hidden Danube Heritage" was developed by the Danube Competence Center with contributions from all project partners. The Danube Culture Platform project has collected close to 140 hidden heritage hotspots allocated to 14 themes. It serves as tool for practitioners on assessing, managing and evaluating the heritage sites, emphasising the hidden aspect of cultural heritage. The Danube Culture Platform project has collected close to 140 hidden heritage hotspots allocated to 14 themes.

The guidebook is organized in three sections:

The Introduction chapter of Section I addresses the evolvement of cultural heritage, its tangible and intangible aspects and valorisation of heritage for other sectors, in particular tourism. The Contextualization chapter intended to establish grounds for recognizing, framing and reveal connections between the cultural heritage known forms and its hidden part, but also frame policy options, and research areas potentially relevant for hidden heritage. In the chapter on Tourism Potential the cultural heritage is assessed as resource contributing to destination attractiveness and competitiveness. Furthermore, in chapters on Communication and Interpretation, rules and principles as well as interpretation materials are provided. The chapter on Benchmarks is offering best practices on development of various aspects of hidden heritage and history events for tourism purpose.

In Section II the cultural routes and linkages to the Council of Europe Cultural Routes, existing ones and/or new cultural routes in the Danube region, are presented.

With intention to collect, increasing access and promote the hidden heritage assets along the Danube the Section III establishes a data base. Through this process cultural elements shall be recorded – the tangibles like galleries, craft industries, distinctive landmarks, local events and industries, as well as the intangibles like memories, personal histories, attitudes and values. The outcome shall be the creation of sets of linked data, that tie together individual themes and projects to form larger, cumulative stories and serve as grounds for extension of existing and/or new cultural and-or tourist routes.

Explore the Guidebook “Our Hidden Danube heritage" of the Danube Competence Center and the Wikipedia page including an interactive map of the collected spots produced by the Upper Austrian Culture Quarter, Linz.