Mastering interpretation by turning phenomena into experiences, evoking participation, taking care of heritage and offering deeper meanings.
Following the Frankopan route, you can get to know 17 castles, fortified towns, towers and manors, as well as three religious buildings. If you’d like to hear captivating stories about an unknown and unusual history, this route is an excellent choice. The buildings along the route may be experienced as ‘time gates’ through which you can reach another, ancient world – distant and exotic, yet somehow close, as if always and only about people.
The route stretches through three areas of Croatia with diverse landscapes: the island of Krk, Gorski Kotar, and Vinodol. Since there are so many choices, you will probably wonder where to start, and which way to go. There is no wrong answer to these questions. Whether you start from Gorski Kotar, Vinodol or the island of Krk, and go from the sea to the mountains or vice versa – it doesn’t matter. The route is so interesting that you’ll always be on the right track.
While managing this kind of cultural and tourist potential the next logical step was to educate all of us who are connected to the route so we can provide the same but modern and splendid experience to all visitors. So, we joined the IE Certified Interpretive Guide (CIG) course and it was definitely one of my personal highlights of this year. Mastering the tools for interpreting heritage, 15 of us future interpreters pushed our personal boundaries at the same time, breathing as a whole. In addition to enriching us with new skills and knowledge in a short and intensive time, the course also served as an excellent team building for people who work on the same Route of the Frankopans project, but have not worked closely together until now.
Interpretation brings numerous benefits for the visitors of our interpretation centres, for local communities, and contributes to the sustainability of our Route. Interpretation enriches the visitor experience. We believe this is one of the most significant and effective ways to build our KTRPF brand. The cultural interpretation promotes each individual locality on our Route and motivates the visitor to actively participate in discovering and visiting other points on it. It leads to new creative ideas and we hope to attract many people and especially create new jobs on our Route.
Interpretation contributes to every project, including ours. It teaches us that inspiration for a good story can be found in everything. That stories are all around us, in the past but also in the present…and all of this leads to a better future. It teaches us who we must include in the creation of our cultural and touristic product, which is extremely important. When we recognise our unique and authentic stories, we add a pinch of art to them – music, architecture, theatre, film, culinary, natural beauty, heritage… with a little imagination and a good interpretation, there you have good cultural tourism and 1,000 reasons to come. We invite you to visit our route, because heroes have their end, but their stories live on!
More information can be found on our website: www.frankopan.eu.
Sandra Polić Živković is a senior expert associate for the programme of Cultural-Tourist Route The Routes of the Frankopan at the Maritime and History Museum of the Croatian Littoral Rijeka in Primorsko–Goranska County. She can be contacted at: sandra.policz@gmail.com.
To cite this article: Polić Živković, Sandra (2022) ‘Inspirational Route of the Frankopans for a better future’ in Interpret Europe Newsletter 4-2022, pg.10
Available online: https://interpret-europe.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Newsletter-2022_4-winter.pdf
