Pushing back the Horizon (11): The Route of Peace

From the Baltic region to Rome

The Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe are not just historical paths put forward as a form of contemporary cultural tourism. Each one came or comes into being from a concept based on culture and European identities, refers to routes which have a historical story behind them, and offers itself to citizens as a tool for reinterpretation through memory. It is with this objective in mind that two Italian scholars, Maria-Vittoria Ambroggi and Giambaldo Belardi, have plotted all the sites and events relating to the concept of Peace from Lübeck to Rome. These places are not only factual but relate to heritage, landscape (the Garden of the Two Banks in Strasbourg), architecture, music (Mendelssohn, Brahms, Beethoven, Verdi, Rossini) and literature (Thomas Mann, Erich Maria Remarque, Heinrich Böll, Heinrich Heine, Carl Spitteler) but are of course also related to the Treaties, religious trends or technology (the spread of Gutenberg’s movable type printing from Mainz towards Italy and Alsace).

This ancient route was covered by Cesar, Attila, Charlemagne, Barbarossa, Otto I and Otto II and, at the time that the Grand Tour was popular, by noblemen, scholars, writers and poets who were driven by the desire to visit ancient sites. Various saints (such as Saint Ubaldo, Saint Francis of Assisi, Hildegard of Bingen, Saint Nicolas of Flüe) and religious men and philosophers (such as Albert Schweitzer or Aldo Capitini) who based their lives on the value of peace have links with this route. After the Via Regia, an East-West cultural route, this is Europe’s second cultural corridor, between North and South, which enables us to better understand the complexity of European history. Indeed, along this introductory route, there is a extremely high number of cornerstones and only the most memorable were selected to form an “interpretation” of peace, and three main areas were identified: shared identity and memory, religions and dialogue, and the fight against racism (°).

Two Pilot Regions

This initiative, which hopes to become a cultural route of the Council of Europe, has found its centre of gravity between two Italian regions: the Marche and Umbria. In 2009, the Marche established a regional day of peace which gave rise to the idea of creating a University of Peace. In the neighbouring region of Umbria, the town of Assisi also identifies with an approach based on peace, fraternity and interreligious dialogue, started by Pope John Paul II in 1986, and based on Saint Francis of Assisi’s life and in particular his meeting with the Sultan of Egypt in 1219. In order to work well with the other cultural routes of the Council of Europe, a breakdown of conceptual and physical cross references was completed and a number of independent European event and information centres need to be introduced and brought together. The Centre Culturel de Rencontre in the Abbey of Neumünster’s festival, “Humour pour la Paix”, is one of the first partners in this context.

For those who are already hoping to visit the trail between Pesaro and Foligno, an innovative cultural, historical and oenogastronomic path has been developed on a route that utilises Google Maps.

° Website: www.stradadellapace.eu
Address: Associazione “La Strada della Pace Lubecca - Roma”. Via Matteotti, 17 06024 Gubbio. C/O Comunità Montana del Catria e Nerone Via L. Alessandri, 19 61043 Cagli (PU)