Valorising Transnational Heritage Through Cultural Routes—European Travels in Special Collections of Adriatic Libraries

Abstract

In this paper, the authors present the possibilities of transnational networking and developing innovative cultural routes through participatory research and creative presentations of European cultural heritage in special collections of Adriatic libraries. The purpose of the research, conducted in the framework of the course Travel Writing and Cultural Routes, was to identify collections that contain travel writing material related to the broader Euro-Mediterranean area and to enable its better visibility through the digitization and creation of new European cultural routes. The students, with the help of librarians at the University Library in Pula, explored special collections, such as the Marine Library, and proposed the creation of new cultural routes, following the itineraries of European travel writers in the Adriatic. The conducted research indicated collections and materials in heritage institutions (archives, libraries and museums) in Pula and Istria relevant to the topics of cultural routes and travel in Europe, as well as regional multicultural history. Libraries in Istria and Dalmatia have valuable collections of rare archival material related to European travels to the Adriatic. The cataloguing and digitisation of rare travel texts has the potential to raise awareness of these collections, adding to their significance for academic research and heritage-based tourism.

1. Introduction

In the introduction, a comprehensive overview of the current project research conducted in the framework of the course Travel Writing and Cultural Routes is provided, emphasizing the importance of transnational cooperation in identifying special collections containing travel writing material related to the broader Euro-Mediterranean area, which can provide visibility and proper valorization through digitization, heritage institution networking, and the creation of new European cultural routes.

This paper presents the research project conducted in the framework of the course Travel Writing and Cultural Routes at the Interdisciplinary Study Programme of Culture and Tourism (Juraj Dobrila University of Pula), highlight the perspectives of students and a course teacher, a senior librarian, and a visiting doctoral student researcher who studied special collections of travelogues. The students, with the help of librarians at the University Library in Pula, explored special collections, such as the Marine Library, and proposed the creation of new cultural routes, following the itineraries of European travel writers in the Adriatic. As models for the discovery, representation, and construction of the Mediterranean imaginary and exotic Arcadia on the edges of European civilization, we have specially elaborated the image of the Adriatic coast in the writings of the most important travel writers from the Enlightenment to romanticism, realism, and modernism: Alberto Fortis, Charles Yriarte, and Hermann Bahr.

The authors took advantage of transnational networking in developing innovative cultural routes through participatory research and creative reinterpretation of European cultural heritage in Adriatic libraries. The purpose of this research was to identify collections that contain travel writing material related to the broader Euro-Mediterranean area and to promote greater visibility through the digitization, networking of cultural institutions, and creation of new European cultural routes. The conducted research indicates collections and materials of heritage institutions (archives, libraries, and museums) in Pula and Istria that are relevant to the topics of cultural routes and travel in Europe, as well as regional multicultural history. Libraries in Istria and Dalmatia have valuable collections of rare archival material related to European travels to the Adriatic, but this unique common heritage is still not visible and accessible enough. As indicated by the authors’ research, a cataloguing and digitization of rare travel texts has the potential to raise awareness of these collections, adding to their significance for academic research and heritage-based tourism.

The research conducted by the co-author, a visiting doctoral researcher at the Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, indicates that important travel books and travel guides held in regional libraries are generally not listed on Worldcat.org—the world’s largest bibliographic database that allows academics and other interested parties to locate libraries that hold relevant materials. As texts are not listed on Worldcat, potential researchers will either overlook the libraries in Istria and Dalmatia or would have to undertake the time-consuming task of searching their catalogues individually, which can be difficult to find and navigate online.

A significant resource for academic researchers and other visitors to the eastern Adriatic is Pula’s aforementioned Marine Library. Housed in the former Marine Casino for the Austro-Hungarian Royal and Imperial Navy, this library holds an extensive selection of travel writing and guides about the eastern Adriatic, as well as locations further afield, but is underused by both academic researchers and visitors to Pula as it lacks an online presence. A cataloguing and digitisation project of rare travel texts held in this library has the potential to raise awareness of this collection, adding to its significance for academic research and heritage-based tourism.

This paper argues that the cataloguing and digitization of rare travel texts in Adriatic libraries has the potential to raise awareness of these collections, adding to their significance for academic research and heritage-based tourism. By using qualitative methodology and mapping existing travel writing material in special collections, it seeks to answer the following interlocking research questions: How can valuable and rare travel writing material in Adriatic libraries be made more visible? How can the most important travel writing material be chosen, and its digitization be facilitated? How can the cooperation of heritage institutions in the Adriatic and the broader Euro-Mediterranean area through transnational (project) networking and the creation of cultural routes be improved?

2. Theoretical Background

2.1. European Travels to the Adriatic

The Adriatic, as “perhaps the most unified of all the regions of the Mediterranean” (Braudel 1997, Book I, p. 115), has a central position in the history of European travel and tourism, as a contact zone characterized by intense transnational mobility and intercultural encounters, which “evolved through exploration, trade, pilgrimage, imperial expansion, imaginings, vacation and migration” (Crowley et al. 2011). Although the Adriatic had been a frequent route since ancient times, mediating knowledge, material heritage, and records of the long history and culture of travel, the cultural and tourist mapping of the Adriatic coastal region intensified during the Enlightenment and in the period of accelerated modernisation and industrialization in the 19th century, when the infrastructure for the development of modern tourism was created. Travellers and architects from the Renaissance to the early 19th century, such as James Stuart and Thomas Allason, stayed in Istria documenting, painting, and researching ancient monuments as a model for Northern European classicism. Romantic travellers continued to explore the eastern Adriatic, again interested in classical antiquity, but also local traditions, customs, and ways of life of an “exotic” population perceived to be on the edges of civilized Europe.

In the context of scientific research or the Grand Tour, until the first decades of the 20th century, Europeans travelled to the Adriatic in search of art and culture (Mønnesland 2011, 2019); The new culture and fashion of cruising along the Adriatic coast by Austrian Lloyd’s steamers in the middle of the 19th century was followed by specialized travel publications, first guidebooks, and travel magazines. Just as the Adriatic Sea, an ancient maritime route at the crossroads of civilizations, connected central Europe with the Mediterranean, travelogues with descriptions of Adriatic journeys played a major role in the communication of European peoples and cultures, mediating knowledge and improving mutual understanding, creating perceptions and articulating trans/national identities (Urošević 2014). Travelling through foreign countries, along a chosen itinerary and following famous predecessors, meant contextualizing the area within the European framework. Italy, in the wider Mediterranean context, has long been the most frequent foreign itinerary of European intellectuals and artists, as a model and source of European culturea typical example is Goethe’s Journey to Italy, which was followed as a model by many contemporaries and later passengers.

2.2. European Cultural and Literary Itineraries

Itineraries of famous travel writers can also serve as a model for creating contemporary cultural and tourist routes. We can define a cultural itinerary as a route that combines the natural and/or cultural heritage of an area to enable visitors to engage in so-called leisure education, allowing them to get to know the area and enriching the visitor experience. This form of cultural route can range from routes of an extremely educational nature to those mainly of a recreational and leisurely character. Themed routes based on cultural (and literary) assets set a good example for merging culture and tourism: they diversify and spread demand in time and space, can be developed with relatively small investment, contribute to the utilization of tourism in unexploited resources, and develop new segments of demand for certain types of special interest tourism (Puczko and Ratz 2007; Urošević and Afrić Rakitovac 2017). Cultural routes are also the priority of a national strategic project for the development of cultural tourism (Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe Programme 2023; Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia 2021). They represent an authentic and networked presentation and valorization of concentrated cultural content. The Council of Europe developed the concept of European cultural itineraries, with the aim to educate on common European values and inform about the common European heritage, as well as give greater visibility and respect to the common European cultural identity, preserving and improving the European cultural heritage in terms of improving life, as a source of social, economic, and cultural development and a quality fulfilment of free time (Jelinčić 2009, p. 100). According to the European Institute of Cultural Routes, they are a model for grassroots networks, promoting the principles that underlie all of the work and values of the Council of Europe—human rights, cultural democracy, cultural diversity, mutual understanding, and exchanges across boundaries—acting as channels for intercultural dialogue and promoting a better knowledge and understanding of European history (Council of Europe 2015). In 2023, we counted 47 Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe, with very different themes that illustrate European memory, history, and heritage and contribute to an interpretation of the diversity of present-day Europe, including literary routes, such as the Women Writers Route, European Fairy Tale Route, or In the Footsteps of Robert Louis Stevenson. From the first cultural route, Santiago de Compostela Pilgrim Routes, certified in 1987, all European cultural routes have included a network of cultural institutions which support travel and the learning of selected topics of common intercultural denomination. In the context of cultural routes and tourism, European museums, libraries, and archives are deposits of common memory and, by using digital technologies to enable digitization and digital preservation and enhance the presentation and interpretation of cultural heritage, we assure greater visibility and accessibility of collections.

2.3. Cultural and Literary Tourism

From ancient travels, pilgrimages, and the Grand Tour, cultural tourism, which assumes that culture and heritage motivated travel as a “quality tourism that cares for the culture it consumes while culturing the consumer” (Puczko and Ratz 2007, p. 1), is considered one of the oldest forms of tourism. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, cultural tourism includes “movements of persons for essentially cultural motivations such as study tours, performing arts and cultural tours, travel to festivals and other cultural events, visits to sites and monuments, travel to study nature, folklore or art, and pilgrimages”. Cultural diversity as the basis of cultural tourism development at the same time represents the common heritage of mankind and the inspiration and motivation for travel, as pointed out by Klarić et al. (2013) who elaborated on the concept of itinerary/route as a way to give value to the narration/interpretation of trans/national heritage. Ashworth et al. (2007) emphasize the pluralistic and transnational nature of heritage in multicultural societies as the contemporary use of the past as well as its importance for intercultural dialogue.

As a type of special interest tourism, literary tourism sits at the intersection of cultural tourism and heritage tourism (Ferreira et al. 2020). In the broader framework of literary tourism, according to Çevik (2020), travel writing could be considered a vehicle through which places and people have been reinterpreted and communicated to wider audiences. The concept of library tourism (or bibliotourism), as a segment of cultural and literary tourism (Robinson and Andersen 2004), is based on the recognition of libraries as tourist attractions and of their crucial role in choosing a tourist destination. As noted by Lainsbury (2019), libraries can form tourist attractions in a multitude of ways, from their architecture, which can vary from some of the oldest within a city to strikingly modern, to their role as both a promoter and purveyor of cultural enrichment. As cultural institutions, libraries may contribute significantly to the development of cultural tourism (Tosic and Lazarevic 2010). A library building’s architecture, the artistic bookshelf displays, and the value of the collection may be offered as cultural values, determining the library as a tourist attraction. Libraries may also assist in all the phases of travel, from the preparation to the place experience and its memory preservation.

2.4. Libraries and Digitization of Special Collections

Considering that cultural tourism motivations are related to learning, experiencing, and understanding a place’s history, culture, and heritage, libraries, as documental repositories, are crucial to supporting the tourist’s information needs and demands, as emphasized by Roque and Guerreiro (2021). Tokić and Tokić (2018) examined the tourism potential of library resources on the Croatian Adriatic coast by mapping 134 regional libraries (including special collections in Istria) through their three main functions: information, education, and culture. Potential tourism resources in libraries, as cultural institutions and guardians of literary heritage, can be developed in library collections, library buildings, library activities, and library services.

As knowledge-based organizations, libraries can be put into the service of tourism as centres of information about the heritage, culture, and traditions of their places. While traditional libraries are reinventing cultural mediation strategies by organizing exhibitions and performative events, digital libraries, over the past two decades, have become crucial channels in obtaining information. By providing access to data through a range of resources and services in a very inclusive and ubiquitous manner, digital collections are an essential tool to tourism (Roque and Guerreiro 2021). The digitization of library collections is transforming the ways in which people discover information and conduct research. Libraries have a responsibility to provide global access to their digital collections: the public demands it and scholars expect it. Digitization has brought significant benefits to the users of special collections. It will also challenge the relative value given to paper originals of rare materials as digital holdings increase. Special collections need to justify their unique value through a deeper understanding of their holdings and an extension of their scope (Hirtle 2002).

Since search mechanisms for information in the traditional library setup are slow and inefficient, the most valuable resources can be accessed online by digitization of these libraries. According to Obiora et al. (2015), digital projects allow users to search for collections rapidly and comprehensively from anywhere at any time. The digitization of priceless and valuable collections of institutions brings prestige to the whole institution as it creates visibility not only of the library’s content but also of umbrella institutions.

The selection of material for digitization is influenced by the tasks of the institution, the copyright over the material, the type and condition of the originals to be digitized, and the target group of users. Material selection criteria are dependent on the size, duration, and costs of the project. In the regular process, unique and valuable materials, the most sought-after materials, materials for exhibitions, and hard-to-find materials are digitized (IFLA 2002). This selection is influenced by the size and quantity of the material, the physical condition of the original, sensitivity, and degree of damage. The value of the material is assessed according to the content, historical and material value, and the following criteria are applied: rarity and uniqueness, artistic value, useful or latest content, extremely sought-after material.

For librarians, digitization made part of their work easier and increased the visibility of libraries as information centres. The problem that librarians face even before the process of digitizing the material begins is how to choose which material to digitize first. Questions that help determine which material has priority for digitization include the following: whether it is so valuable that its digital version can ensure the interest of users, and whether digitization will increase access and use of that material, and whether users can be predicted. It is not easy to decide which material will be the priority for digitization. Some material is extremely important to librarians as custodians of heritage, while users are not interested. In order for the library to digitize certain material, it needs the approval of the copyright holder, and some authors are not easy to find because the libraries do not keep records of contact of the author, nor of the heirs of the rights. The problem is pronounced with “orphan works” (Directive 2012/28/EU 2012) whose author cannot be determined or found, as the permission of the rights holder cannot be obtained.

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. Materials

Since 1949, the University Library in Pula has been preserving the multicultural regional heritage collected and preserved by more than three generations of founders, donors, and librarians. It inherited the funds of the Imperial and Royal Naval Libraries (K.u.K Marine-Bibliothek, founded in 1802 in Venice), the Provincial Library of Istria (Biblioteca provinciale dell’Istria), the library of the Pula Naval Casino (Marine-Kasino Bibliothek), and the City Library (Biblioteca Civica). Its Old and Rare Book and Manuscript Collection contains about 100 volumes of books (incunabula and books from the 16th and 17th century), including the so called Flaciana—works by the famous European religious reformer Matija Vlačić Ilirik born in Labin (Mathias Flacius Illyrius, 1520–1575), with 27 titles in 34 volumes.

Besides library buildings, which with their historic, artistic, and architectural significance offer a variety of content that can be attractive to various types of tourists, library collections including written collections such as rare books, old books, collections of incunabula, manuscripts, local heritage collections, journals, maps, photographs, etc., can be recognized as cultural tourism attractions too. Some of the special library collections are listed in the Register of Cultural Goods of Croatia, such as the Marine Library in Pula, a significant resource for academic researchers and other visitors to the eastern Adriatic. A cataloguing and digitisation project of rare travel texts held in this library has the potential to raise awareness of this collection, adding to its significance for academic research and heritage-based tourism.

Since its beginning, the Marine Library has been a scholarly and professional library meant to fulfil the navy’s requirements of a central collection of naval books and periodicals. Its unusual fate and continuous migration represent the turbulent history of Istria and the Adriatic. Due to the war for the unification of Italy in 1848, the college was transferred to Trieste, where in 1851 it was transformed into the Marine Academy. In 1854, the newly formed Marine Astronomical Observatory in Trieste took over part of the Marine Academy collection. In 1866, the collection was moved from Trieste to Pula (Pola), and in 1869 it was included with the newly formed Hydrological Institute, as a separate department. After the fall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy at the end of 1918, Pula was occupied by the Italian army, which took possession of the library. The Marine Library was integrated to the Library of the Military Naval Command in Pula. After the capitulation of Italy in 1943, Pula was occupied by the German army, which in 1944 carried away by train the entire marine library collection to the Eisgrub and Feldsberg Castles (now Czech Republic). From there, it was moved to the War Archives in Vienna between 1949 and 1950. In 1975, the biggest part of the preserved collection (around 20,000 volumes) was returned to Pula as a gift of the Republic of Austria, and it was given to the University Library in Pula. In 1992, the Marine Library was registered as a cultural monument of the Republic of Croatia. The Marine Library contains 6757 titles in 20,731 volumes, with scientific and professional publications from scientific societies and institutions mostly from Europe but also the United States, Russia, Japan, and South America, which were published prior to 1918. The contents of these nautical and science publications include pure mathematics, technology, military science, geography, and philosophical sciences (particularly history and linguistics). About 60% of the library holdings are in German, 15% in French, 15% in English, 7% in Italian, 0.7% in Latin, and about 2.3% in other languages (Spanish, Swedish, Danish, Portuguese, Hungarian, Russian, and others). A significant part of the fund refers to natural and technical sciences, shipping, hydrography, and oceanography. About two hundred dictionaries of various languages, encyclopedias, lexicons (for example, Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie from 1781 to 1782), historical, and geographical works and travelogues about worldwide geographical and cultural contexts give this library both humanistic–scientific and general educational features. The value of the fund of this library is not only derived from the numerous rare copies of books, but also from its maritime-scientific comprehensiveness, which results from its purpose for the Navy, or maritime in general, and from the acquisition of scientifically relevant publications in this field in various languages (University Library Pula 2023).

In addition to the already existing project “Istrian Newspapers Online (ino.com.hr) as part of which 40 newspaper titles, 11 magazine titles, and 15 yearbook titles were digitized and published, with the main aim of protection of the originals of old and rare newspapers (1850–1950) that facilitated online availability for users and the presentation of the multicultural heritage of Istria, in 2023 the University Library in Pula launched three more projects for the digitization of library materials. In the framework of the project of the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia e-Culture—Digitization of Cultural Heritage and in cooperation with the Istrian Historical Society, the project of digitizing old books on the history of Istria, including rare travel writing material, began in February 2023. Collaborators on the project are history students of the Faculty of Humanities in Pula, the University Library in Pula, the City Library and Reading Room of Pula, and the Society of Librarians of Istria. The first book in the series (Franjo Horvat Kiš, Istarski puti, Zagreb 1919) was digitized by undergraduate history students. The plan was to make dozens of books available to the public by the end of the year.

The Historical and Maritime Museum of Istria has over 100,000 items of cultural, historical, political, military, and ethnographic character in 18 collections. The Cartographic Collection, the Collection of Posters and Promotional Materials, and the collection of old and rare books in the museum library are particularly valuable. Recent projects, such as the opening of the Fort Center, a visitor centre with a multimedia exhibition presenting the City of Pula’s fortification system, included use of ICT technology in presenting rare archival material.

In the Documentation Department of the Archaeological Museum of Istria, documentation includes materials created by travellers. These comprise the Print Collection, the Postcard Collection, and the Photo Library. Given that the museum has a long history of taking care of Pula’s monumental heritage (since its foundation in 1902, formally since 2013), it has methodically collected visual and documentary material with motifs of cultural and historical monuments of the city (graphics, postcards, and historical photographs). The current collection includes 146 graphics, 1800 postcards, and 97 historical photographs. Since ancient times, the antiquities, which are abundant in Pula, have aroused the interest and admiration of visitors, travellers, and pilgrims. For example, in the Print Collection, works of exceptional artistic and documentary value are the sheets of Piranesi, Clerisseau and Tischbein.

The virtual collection of the City Library Pula includes the first guidebooks related to Pula and environs, as well as digitized travelogues and monographs, such as Thomas Allason’s Picturesque Views of the Antiquities of Pola in Istria, published by John Murray in 1819.

3.2. Methods

This paper presents the research project conducted in the framework of the course Travel Writing and Cultural Routes at the Interdisciplinary Study Programme of Culture and Tourism (Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Croatia). The students, with the help of librarians at the University Library in Pula, explored special collections, such as the Marine Library, and proposed the creation of new cultural routes following the itineraries of European travel writers in the Adriatic.

After mapping local and regional special collections, the research participants proposed the networking of cultural institutions with special collections into local, regional, and European cultural routes connecting key heritage sites and collections, such as the University Library in Pula, the Marine Library, the Historical and Maritime Museum of Istria in Pula’s Venetian castle, and the Archaeological Museum of Istria with European partner institutions, to promote their special collections at the local, regional, and transnational level.

The research participants also mapped existing projects related to cultural routes inspired by the European travel writers, such as “Dalmatia—a destination of European Grand Tour in the 18th and 19th century” by the Institute of Art History from Zagreb (http://grandtourdalmatia.org; accessed on 30 January 2024) from 2014. There is also a similar project about travelling on the Italian side of the Adriatic coast. The data are collected by the project Viaggio Adriatico (https://viaggioadriatico.ict.uniba.it/; accessed on 30 January 2024) of International Interuniversity Center of Studies on the Adriatic Journey (CISVA) at the University of Salento in Lecce. For now, the project Europeanatravel (https://pro.europeana.eu/project/europeanatravel; accessed on 30 January 2024) mentions only one trip along the eastern Adriatic Coast, the famous Voyage d’ Italie, de Dalmatie, de Grèce et dv Levant by Jacob Spon and George Wheler, published in 1678. For most of the others, you still need to travel the route of the old pilgrims and visit the libraries in the cities on the Adriatic, which keep travelogues not well known among the general public, because they are not digitized, and there is no record of them in online catalogues of libraries, even in the world catalogue Worldcat. This project will help to digitize collections of old travelogues and thus present them to the public.

Just as travel writers from previous centuries started their journey from Venice, this journey can be repeated along the eastern Adriatic mainland. The contemporary journey would be much more pleasant and faster along the route of the Adriatic highway to Albania, visiting libraries that keep old travelogues. Libraries on the cultural route could include Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice, which houses Viaggiatori stranieri in Italia, fondo Tursi, a selection of works on the journey to Italy; Biblioteca Civica Attilio Hortis in Trieste; Central Library Srečko Vilhar in Koper with collections Grisoni and Besenghi; the City Library and University Library, particularly the Austro-Hungarian Marine Library collection in Pula; the University Library collections Fluminensia and Adriatica in Rijeka; the Research Library in Zadar; the Juraj Šižgorić City Library in Šibenik; University Library special collections in Split; and Dubrovnik’s Research Library’s Ragusina Collection. The route would culminate in Kotor’s City Library and the city libraries in Durres and Vlore in Albania or the National Library in Tirana.

4. Results—Following European Travel Writers’ Itineraries

Travel has always meant that education and travelogues are the oldest form of tourist promotion, reminds Frančić (2019), who mapped more than 170 of the most important travelogues related to Adriatic coast and Istria that have been digitized in European libraries. In the framework of the current project and the course on Travel Writing and Cultural Routes, the interdisciplinary team of authors analyzed European travel literature inspired by the Adriatic coast as a specific form of interpretation of transnational cultural and natural heritage through special collections.

As models for the discovery, representation, and construction of the Mediterranean imaginary and exotic Arcadia on the edges of European civilization, we have especially elaborated the image of the Adriatic coast in the writings of the most important travel writers from the Enlightenment to romanticism, realism, and modernism: Alberto Fortis, Charles Yriarte, and Hermann Bahr.

We analyzed Fortis’s work Travels into Dalmatia (Fortis 1774, 1778) as a paradigmatic model of travel literature, the discovery and construction of the European “Other”, and the representation of the eastern Adriatic coast as an exotic mythical space and at the same time an unstable border area on the edge of Europe. The travelogue, scientific in style, Rousseauian in ideology, played a major role in European literature, mediating the myth of the Morlacs as a cultural value and motive for travel. The journey through Dalmatia reminded civilized Europe that in its centre there is a forgotten, unknown, and exotic people as sought by philosophers of return to nature, and the folk ballad Asanaginica was supposed to show that even primitive peoples, unspoiled by civilization, are capable of creating superb esthetic works. In this way, Fortis’s book and its echoes mediated the creation and transmission of the myth of Morlacks in European culture and the creation of stereotypes about trans-Adriatic “noble savages”. On the other hand, local readings, reactions, and interpretations of Fortis’s travelogues (such as Lovrić’s polemic Remarks on the Journey to Dalmatia by Abbot Albert Fortis and Life of Stanislav Sočivica from 1776) point to forms of self-representation, self-perception, and construction of identity in the cultural permeations of the Enlightenment period. After analyzing the Fortis itinerary, the students proposed a new thematic route, “In the footsteps of Fortis”, with the aim of promoting tangible and intangible cultural heritage, valorizing common European and Mediterranean values and identities, and connecting Adriatic libraries with European partner institutions by trailing Fortis.

Continuing on Fortis’ imaginary (and later stereotype) of “noble savages” living in Adriatic Arcadia, Charles Yriarte (1832–1898) in his travelogue thoroughly described and depicted landscapes, architecture, valuable cultural heritage, and the way of life of people from Venice to the Montenegrin coast. After L’Istrie et la Dalmatie (1874) and Trieste e l’Istria (1875), the edition Les bords de l’Adriatique (1878) followed, offering vivid descriptions of Adriatic towns and countryside (Figure 1). Pula thus “…offers the traveler a series of interesting things: the archaeologist finds well-preserved Roman monuments from the glorious period, the one who searches for traces of Venetian domination in Istria in the medieval city has a complete copy of the Venetian colony; finally, there is also the modern part of the city, a huge agglomeration of military buildings, very interesting for the traveler who is attracted by representative manifestations of the industrial spirit of modern life…” (Yriarte 1999, p. 38). The literary itinerary, Venice—Trieste—Istria—Kvarner Bay—Zadar—Boka Kotorska—Otranto—Lecce—Brindisi—Bari—Ancona—Pesaro—Rimini—Ravenna—Venice, served the students to design a new Mediterranean cultural route—“Charles Yriarte’s Adriatic Routes”.

We read Hermann Bahr’s (1863–1934) Dalmatian Journey from 1909 as the writer’s literary manifesto and at the same time as one of the most widely read and most important travel essays of Austrian modernism, the pinnacle of Austrian travel literature about Dalmatian Croatia, with four editions until 1912. One of the key representatives of Viennese modernism presents himself in the travelogue as the discoverer of modern Dalmatian culture and literature. Dalmatia is no longer a land of folklore and tradition but becomes a bond of the Austrian cultural mission between East and West. Also important are the writer’s notes about Pula, which as Austria’s main war port turned from a provincial town into a European city in half a century, and nearby Brijuni, which the Austrian industrialist Paul Kupelwieser turned from a malarial island into an elite Mediterranean resort and climatic health resort for European and world aristocracy:

“Until a few years ago, people used to say in Pula: Brijuni is our curse, there in front of us is the focus of malaria and it infects everything! Until Kupelwieser came. Our only luck in Austria is that from time to time there is always a Kupelwieser. These are people with eyes that see. They see on the ground what it wants and can do. They see possibilities. And then they don’t say much, but they make it happen…”.

(Bahr 1991, pp. 27–29)

After reading the Dalmatian Journey, the students designed a new itinerary—“On the Route of the Lloyd’s Steamships”.

As shown by the research conducted by a visiting doctoral researcher, British travellers have explored Adriatic cultural heritage with great enthusiasm and praised the coastline for being “far from those hackneyed tracks infested by the typical tourists, both English and Transatlantic”, as the writer R.H.R. began his travel book Rambles in Istria, Dalmatia and Montenegro (R.H.R. 1875, pp. 11–12). The Scottish architect Robert Adam produced sketches of Diocletian’s Palace in 1764 and started a cultural trend in Britain for appreciating Dalmatia’s Roman heritage (Wild Bićanić 2006). He was followed by the Egyptologist Sir John Gardner Wilkinson, author of Dalmatia and Montenegro (1848), and the architect Thomas Graham Jackson, whose three-volume handbook Dalmatia, the Quarnero and Istria attractively framed the region’s architectural heritage as “unknown wonders” (Jackson 1887, vol. 1, pp. ix–x). Equally as prominent in the promotion of Adriatic tourism for British audiences was the historian E.A. Freeman, who wrote that “The coasts, the islands, the channels, of Dalmatia are as yet uninvaded by the British tourist” (Freeman 1881, p. 85).

British tourism to Dalmatia greatly expanded in the decade before the First World War, with noted visitors including the anthropologist Maude Holbach (1908), the artist Emilie Barrington (1912), and the suffragist Alice Lee Moqué (1914). The number of British women travelling to and writing about the region indicates that it was culturally prescribed as a safe and respectable travel destination with tourist infrastructure, such as up-to-date hotels and good transport links, “catering to the disabling characteristics of a dependent femininity” (Smith 2001, p. 25). The most notable visitor, however, was the famous writer James Joyce who worked as an English teacher at the Berlitz School in Pula between 1904 and 1905. Despite his unfavourable description of the town as a “maritime Siberia”, by following his life and literary itineraries another cultural route had been created, the “James Joyces’s Adriatic Itineraries”.

5. Discussion

As shown in this paper, the libraries of Istria and Dalmatia have important primary materials for excavating the history of European tourist travel to the eastern Adriatic but present challenges for researchers looking to explore this subject area. The research conducted by the co-author, a visiting doctoral researcher at the Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, indicated that important travel books and travel guides held in regional libraries are generally not listed on Worldcat.org—the world’s largest bibliographic database that allows academics and other interested parties to locate libraries which hold relevant materials. For instance, although searching databases from the Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Worldcat suggests that the closest copies of Maude Holbach’s Dalmatia: The Land Where East Meets West (1908), the best-selling British guide to the eastern Adriatic before 1914, are located at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences, Ljubljana, and the University of Pisa, Italy, when in fact copies of this text are held in the Marine Library in Pula as well as the Research Library in Zadar. As texts are not listed on Worldcat, potential researchers will either overlook the libraries in Istria and Dalmatia or would have to undertake the time-consuming task of searching their catalogues individually, which can be difficult to find and navigate online.

A significant resource for academic researchers and other visitors to the eastern Adriatic is Pula’s aforementioned Marine Library. This library holds an extensive selection of travel writing and guides about the eastern Adriatic, as well as locations further afield, but is underused by both academic researchers and visitors to Pula as it lacks an online presence. A cataloguing and digitisation project of rare travel texts held in this library has the potential to raise awareness of this collection, adding to its significance for academic research and heritage-based tourism.

6. Conclusions

In this paper, the authors present the research conducted in the framework of the course on Travel Writing and Cultural Routes, which involved students who elaborated European travel writing material kept in the special collections of heritage institutions in Istria and in Adriatic libraries. Since the conducted research indicates that some of the most important sources are not available or visible to interested researchers, the authors proposed digitizing the rare collections but also networking the Adriatic libraries and development of literary and library tourism cultural routes along the Adriatic coast, which would connect heritage institutions, following the Adriatic journeys of famous European travel writers.

The conducted research indicates the great potential for transnational networking and developing innovative cultural routes through the participatory research and creative presentation of European cultural heritage in special collections of Adriatic libraries. The purpose of the research, conducted in the framework of the course Travel Writing and Cultural Routes, was to identify collections that contain travel writing material related to the broader Euro-Mediterranean area and to enable their better visibility through the digitization and creation of new European cultural routes. The students, with the help of librarians at the University Library in Pula, explored special collections, such as the Marine Library, and proposed the creation of new cultural routes, following the itineraries of European travel writers in the Adriatic. The authors answered the following research questions: How can valuable and rare travel writing material in Adriatic libraries be made more visible? How can the most important travel writing material be chosen, and how can its digitization be facilitated? How can the cooperation of heritage institutions in the Adriatic and the broader Euro-Mediterranean area be improved through transnational (project) networking and the creation of cultural routes? The conducted research indicated collections and materials in heritage institutions (archives, libraries, and museums) in Pula and Istria relevant to the topics of cultural routes and travel in Europe, as well as regional multicultural history. The research resulted in the proposal of a route that would connect libraries and heritage institutions along the Adriatic coast and preserve rare collections of European travelogues. Since libraries on both sides of the Adriatic, in Istria and Dalmatia, have valuable collections of rare archival material related to European travels to the Adriatic, the cataloguing and digitization of rare travel texts has the potential to raise awareness of these collections, adding to their significance for academic research and heritage-based tourism.