Two towers mysteries: promotion of historical heritage of Lutsk and Lublin through the innovative technologies

Partner cities Lutsk and Lublin have common ancient history and a great amount of monuments of historical and cultural heritage. The unique remains of the fortifications of the Middle Ages other interesting monuments in Lutsk and Lublin stay unnoticed by visitors due to the low level of interest in monuments as mere historical buildings. The aim of the project is to increase the number of visitors of the Old cities of Lutsk and Lublin as places of high concentration of historical heritage, strengthening their interest in monuments by a new cross-border and innovative tourist route – the virtual quest with augmented reality in Lutsk and Lublin. Creation of such a virtual route on the basis of monuments in both cities will allow to fill these objects with new meaning, to encourage the visitors to get acquainted with historical facts, myths and legends connected with them, to extend the tourist age range, to create an accessible tool to promote the common history. The objective of the project is planned to be achieved through four main project activities: the online round table aimed at scientific discussion of research on the historical realities of Lutsk and Lublin, development of the popular science electronic booklet "Everyday life of historical Lutsk and Lublin", creating the virtual quest with augmented reality in Lutsk and Lublin; promotional campaign of Lutsk and Lublin and the project itself. The cross-border character of the project will enhance the expected effect through the exchange of tourists within a single tourist route, and a common work on the booklet “Everyday life of historical Lutsk and Lublin”, strengthen partnership between Lutsk and Lublin, promote intercultural dialogue and popularize the common historical and cultural heritage. The project in Lutsk plans to create a mobile application in the form of a virtual quest of the old city, and the existing tourist mobile application will be supplemented by a new route in Lublin. The idea of the quest is to place the special signs/icons on plates fixed on the territory of monuments of Lutsk and Lublin, that one could scan with a camera of a mobile device and with the help of an electronic guide to get acquainted in the form of entertainment with important events of historical times, appearance, clothes, life of different social groups of population of that epoch, local myths and legends. This will encourage tourists to search for new hidden signs and to visit other monuments in both cities. The quest will stretch along the most exciting places of the old parts of Lutsk and Lublin with the starting point located near the most known and visited object of history for each city. The promotional campaign of Lutsk and Lublin is also planned within the project. The aim of the partners promotional campaign will be to encourage potential tourists to visit Lutsk and Lublin, offering them to use an attractive and innovative product - a virtual quest. The promotional teaser, which lies in the basis of the advertising campaign, will promote the main locations, historical events and persons in the partner cities. Target groups of the project are residents of Lutsk and Lublin, tourists mainly from the Polish-Ukrainian border: young people, as well as families with children; scientists, researchers, artists, masters of folk art. As a result of the successful implementation of the project we expect an increase of tourists in the Old cities per year by approximately 3.5% in Lutsk (105 thousand people) and 2.0% in Lublin (603 thousand people).

Number of cross-border cultural events organized using ENI support (ENI/CBC 8) - 1 Number of newly created tourist services increasing the use of cultural heritage in tourism - 1 Number of campaigns promoting local culture and history (cultural and historical heritage) - 1 Number of publications describing cultural and/or historical heritage of the region(s) - 1 Number of newly created infrastructure increasing the use of cultural heritage in tourism (e.g. cycle routes, educational paths, etc.) - 1 Number of participants of cross-border cultural events organized with the support of ENI funding - 40