Saint Michael Way

Open Call for certification to Citizens, NGOs & Public Private Institutions

Saint Michael Way as a
Cultural Route of the Council of Europe

To be part of the “Saint Michael Way - Rural Territories and Ancestral Cultures”, a project aimed to promote a new interpretation of European rural territories from an Afro-Eurasian and Transatlantic perspective. A project to be presented for Certification as a “Cultural Route of the Council of Europe” to the Executive Secretary of the Enlarged Partial Agreement (EPA) on Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe (CoE) under regular certification cycle evaluation process as posted on the web

Comitato Promotore San Michele Cammino di Cammini

In recent years, the “Comitato Promotore San Michele Cammino di Cammini” has been working on the structuring of the Italian section of the Path through extensive activities involving hundreds of operators and territorial organizations, such as Local Action Groups (GALs) and Mountain Communities, for which it has obtained recognition from the Italian Ministry of Tourism.
In the course of its work, it was able to verify the presence of historical places of worship dedicated to the Archangel in correspondence with rural areas historically home to important agricultural and transhumance activities.
This correlation was confirmed when the Committee contacted universities and study centres in European territories where there were important historical sites of Micaelic cult: the same rural imprint was recognised in these places.
Even across the Atlantic, for example in South America, San Miguel is an expression of a cult imported with emigration that particularly marks rural areas.
From this experience and from these considerations derives the project that we intend to present to the European Union for appropriate recognition called:

Rural Territories and Ancestral Cultures

TERRITORIES

ROUTES

Starting from the historical route connecting Ireland with the Holy Land, the project aims to define and connect the central path with routes reaching it from various directions into a single, large tourism and cultural network.
The activity, already initiated, aims to narrate, to contribute to its preservation, the extraordinary tapestry and variety of the tradition of rural and pastoral Europe, in connection with the network of places of worship dedicated to the Archangel Michael, venerated by Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

The subject of the narrative is the territory

the precious casket containing the richness of its history and the people who populate it, in a complex set of ingredients that the Romans called: Genius Loci. This powerful energy represents the deep soul and the most important resource that permeates and contaminates the customs of the inhabitants and shapes the landscape.

A precise choice of project freedom envisions the possibility that the Path, like a watercourse, becomes 'navigable even in its tributaries,' so that not only the characteristics of the territories traversed by the traditional Path line but also those of less proximate and even distant areas can be explored and narrated with digital technologies to wayfarers and particularly to young people and students.
Especially to these is addressed the project of exploring a variegated land, rich in memory, through a real and virtual museum that retraces, in the footsteps of the veneration of Saint Michael, the rural history of Europe over the centuries, which has left extraordinary traces in its Tangible and Intangible Heritage and which continues to regenerate alive and vital and to share its multifaceted beauty in an increasingly sustainable way.