Italia-Croatia

25/05/2026

On Monday, February 23rd, at the Grottammare Town Hall, a press conference was held to announce the launch of the cross-border cooperation project “TIMELESS ADRIATIC”. 

The project, which will conclude in June 2027, is supported by the Interreg Italy-Croatia 2021-2027 program and aims to enhance the value of historic tower clocks, with the Municipality of Grottammare (Italy) serving as the lead partner alongside the City of Rovinj - Rovigno (Croatia) and the Europelago Foundation.

The conference was opened by the Mayor of Grottammare, Alessandro Rocchi, who emphasized how the project is an opportunity to network between institutions, associations, and entities, as well as between “two different nations that are united by a sea and shared traditions". He noted that cooperation projects “open up new worlds and challenges,” expressing hope for a future twinning between Grottammare and Rovinj - Rovigno.

While the project aims to give new value to historic clocks, it “must have young people at its center, who must be involved through creative and collaborative methods to provide new energy, new rhythm, and new visions to the institutions,” noted Raffaella Lioce of the Europelago Foundation. 

Nicholas Murdica, the project manager, illustrated how the project will revolve around five main actions to leverage the creative potential of new generations:

• Creation of an inventory of historic tower clocks in the Italy-Croatia Adriatic area to produce an interactive digital map.

• Involvement of high school students through a “Innovation challenge” for multidisciplinary proposals to value this shared heritage.

• Evaluation and selection of the best proposals by a technical-scientific committee to implement them in creative hubs.

• Presentation of the selected ideas during two public Festivals in Rovinj - Rovigno and Grottammare.

• The project will culminate in the launch of the UNESCO candidacy process for this shared heritage.

The project will actively involve the citizens, as reiterated by Lorenzo Rossi, Councilor for Cultural Growth, stating it will create “relationships not only linked by the concept of time but also by the space and the relationships between our people”. 

Another central goal is to change how tourism is conceived; Gianfranca Šuran, Vice-Mayor of Rovinj - Rovigno, expressed the hope for a “participatory and sustainable tourism that respects territorial identity and adds value”.

Finally, Mario Ialenti (Coop. Soc. Odòs) invited an active collaboration between all of the figures involved to “expand relations with other locations that host historic clocks in the Adriatic area and that have already laid the foundations for their valorization”. 

Following the press conference, the team held their first operational meeting to detail the actions planned for the coming months.