A symposium on “Sultans Trail: Close Encounters of East and West” was held in Niš on November 14 and 15, organized by the Academic Council of the Sultans Trail Cultural Route, based in Haarlem, the Netherlands. It is the third symposium on the mentioned topic, and the previous two were organized in Haarlem (2022) and Ilok, Croatia (2024). The Institute for Peace through Tourism/IIPT Serbia participated with papers in all symposiums of the Sultans Trail Academic Council.
This year’s symposium was held at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Niš. In total, seventeen works by authors from six countries were presented, of which eight authors were from Serbia.
The morning part of the first day of the symposium was dedicated to topics related to the cultural heritage of the countries that make up the Sultans Trail. In the afternoon part, two presentations were specifically related to cultural routes: “Promotion of Council of Europe Cultural Routes in Serbia”, by Smiljana Novičić (National Tourism Organization of Serbia) and “Bridges of Peace: Tourism and Culture” by Prof. Jovan Popesku.
On the second day of the symposium a session was held dedicated to cultural routes, as well as other tourist routes – their establishment, use, as well as the creation of new ones. Within the session, five papers were presented, which covered the functioning of existing routes as well as plans for the creation of new routes (three authors were from Serbia). Introductory and concluding remarks were made by Prof. Jovan Popesku.