Thermal heritage on the ways to Rome. The role of knowledge for enriching tourism experiences along three Italian pilgrimage ways

Pilgrimage is nowadays gaining in popularity as a new form of slow tourism, combining outdoor exercises with spiritual and cultural experiences along established transnational and transregional itineraries. Pilgrimage ways have great potential as territorial development tools, enabling new economic activities and enterprises mainly in peripheral rural areas. Within the rurAllure H2020 project aiming at the promotion of rural museums and heritage sites in the vicinity of European pilgrimage routes, three pilgrimage routes leading to Rome, supported by three Italian universities and a Spanish one, have joined forces to test and experiment new meaningful contents on thermal and water-related heritage to enrich the educational potential of walking tourism. After a short research context introduction, the present contribution summarises the activities carried out in each pilot area, while in the conclusions we will underline the main takeaways as well as potential further research lines that have emerged from the cooperation between experts in archaeology and thermal heritage, tourism and the civil society here represented by municipalities, the managing bodies of the pilgrimage trails and the pilgrims themselves.