The European project HITTS – Heritage, Innovation, Territory, Tourism and Sustainability officially presents “A Common History of the SUDOE Territory”, a new result created with an ambitious objective: to provide SUDOE with a shared narrative that highlights its cultural identity, its landscapes and its living heritage, and that serves as a basis for building a sustainable, sensitive and community-aligned model of tourism.
Based on fieldwork carried out in the territorial laboratories and on a broad collection of testimonies, local memories and landscape readings, the document captures the essence of the participating territories and transforms it into a transnational narrative that articulates common values, deep connections with water, agricultural traditions, cultural landscapes and a shared way of inhabiting the rural environment.
This vision is clearly reflected in chapters such as “Everywhere the Water Murmurs”, “Landscapes Like Open Books” or “Here the Heritage Is Alive”, where the elements that unite geographically and culturally diverse territories are shown through a common sensitivity to landscape, memory and community.
A strategic tool for the tourism of the future
The new common narrative aims to become a reference tool to:
• Strengthen the international positioning of the SUDOE area as a high-value cultural and natural destination.
• Support new tourism products, thematic routes and experiences based on tangible and intangible heritage.
• Promote participatory governance, ensuring that the voice of rural communities remains central.
• Connect local initiatives under a shared identity capable of communicating the richness and diversity of the territory.
The document also identifies the common values and challenges faced by the SUDOE area: heritage preservation, social cohesion, adaptation to climate change and the need for tourism that provides meaning and well-being to the local population.
A narrative built from the territory
Far from being a conventional academic or institutional publication, “A Common History of the SUDOE Territory” is a narrative written from within the territory, revealing what the SUDOE area shares beyond administrative borders and offering, for the first time, a cohesive image of the region.
Document download