Italia-Croatia

28/06/2026

Ravenna (Italy), 18 June 2026

After three years of cooperation between Italy and Croatia, the VALUE Plus partnership met in Ravenna from 17 to 19 June 2026 for its Final Conference. The public event took place on Thursday 18 June in the Sala Martini of the MAR – Ravenna Art Museum. It brought together the project partners, the municipalities and authorities that signed the governance protocols for the Po Delta district, cultural and tourism stakeholders, and the public. The aim was to present the project’s results and discuss what comes next.

An atlas of Adriatic heritage

The first session, led by the Town of Cres and Istituto Delta Ecologia Applicata, presented the mapping work carried out in the five districts: Po Delta, Patù, Cres, Medulin and Dubrovnik. The partners mapped 787 points of interest, covering archaeological, architectural, artistic and natural heritage as well as local economic activities. These were organised into 22 thematic itineraries, ranging from the Roman Adriatic to water landscapes, and from Byzantine mosaics to the influence of Venice. 51 events were also catalogued.

All this content is gathered in DIOMEDE, the project’s web-GIS platform, which gives visibility to lesser-known heritage and connects the districts in a single tool. The network is already attracting interest beyond the partnership: 35 expressions of interest have come from potential new districts.

Learning across borders

The second session reviewed the training activities:

• 3 digital educational kits in Italian and Croatian;
• 15 training activities;
• 59 study-trip participants, more than planned;
• 4 cross-border tourist packages designed by students.

The University of Bologna’s Summer School used the Po Delta Park as a case study for sustainable tourism and heritage governance. Its core message was that sustainable tourism starts by making citizens protagonists of their own heritage.

In the student exchange, 36 students and 5 teachers from three schools in Ravenna, Cres and Lošinj worked together for about three months. They met local operators, took part in field visits and pitched their ideas to three juries. Around 30 tourism operators also joined a three-day study visit to Cervia, Comacchio and Adria. Participants described it above all as “rich”, and it led to new collaborations. One unplanned result: the operators have since formed their own active online community.

Eight pilot actions

The third session presented the eight pilot actions, which combine digital interpretation, small physical upgrades and a strong focus on accessibility:

• Ravenna: a new Project Room and a redeveloped photography space at MAR, visited during the conference with a guided tour of the Paolo Roversi Gallery;
• Po Delta Park Veneto: 3D models of stored collections and plans to reconstruct a Roman ship;
• Emilia-Romagna Region: four accessibility stations at the Museum of Salt in Cervia, designed as a replicable model for small museums;
• Comacchio: subtitled video content and a project to improve the Spina open-air archaeological park;
• Cres: a VR experience of the Renaissance town across 11 reconstructed locations;
• Medulin: the Vižula interpretation centre and an underwater museum trail with five sites;
• Dubrovnik: a walking path along about 4 km of the Renaissance aqueduct, with the first kilometre fully accessible;
• Patù: a museum hub linked to the Vereto Archaeological Museum.

A Meta-District built to last

In the afternoon, after institutional greetings from the Municipality of Ravenna, the fourth session focused on governance. The message was clear: the results must continue after the project ends. Rather than creating new bodies, the partners proposed a Memorandum of Understanding for each district, setting up a coordination group and thematic working tables to keep a shared action plan up to date.

The draft action plan for the Po Delta is built on five strategic axes:

• reducing seasonality;
• environmental sustainability;
• enhancing cultural and natural heritage;
• accessibility and inclusion;
• youth involvement and innovation.

The districts are connected through a cross-border Meta-District for sharing good practices. In the roundtable, local development groups, the regional tourism system and businesses called for quick, concrete action. The Croatian partners expressed their interest in a possible future phase, provisionally called “Extra Value”.

The Lead Partner closed the public programme with an overview of three years of work across the five districts.

Closing with music

On Friday 19 June, the Music Festival at MAR celebrated the end of the museum’s pilot action with an evening of live music and contemporary mosaic, as part of the VALUE Plus Cultural Festival.