Heritage hub Rasnov

The medieval castle Râșnov Citadel in Transylvania, Romania attracts several hundred thousand visitors every year. It is now undergoing extensive restoration work.

The overall goal for this project is to create a sustainable management model for the castle and to connect it to the local town and the surrounding areas by using the castle’s inherent qualities in development of cultural heritage experiences and business opportunities.

The project is a cooperation between Hands on History, Mioritics and Râșnov municipality. It is funded by the EEA and Norway grants.

Local context

Râșnov Fortress, a class A monument and a major tourist attraction in Romania (approx. 500,000 visitors in 2019), has gone through several very different and deficient administration experiences in the last 150 years. Without a military utility from the end of the 19th century, it was abandoned until 2000 when it was taken over by an individual from Italy. After 10 years of illegal restorations, works unrelated to the historical context, poor quality souvenir products and intensive tourist exploitation, the fortress returned to the administration of Râșnov municipality which tried to keep this tourist attraction afloat until they could begin doing some important restoration works. An extensive restoration process with European funds started in February 2020. The restoration project involves only infrastructure and there’s no funding for the cultural content. As a result of the administrative experiences from 2000-2010 and 2010-2020, Râșnov City Hall is aware of the need for a management model based on new principles and quality criteria, an expertise that can hardly be found in Romania.

From the last 20 years of experience, it can be said that the benefits from the tourist exploitation of the fortress are very little felt by a wider part of the community but are rather almost exclusively related to the sale of access tickets and small traders selling imported products, although there are small local artists and producers in the area that can be promoted. On the other hand, these local artists and producers don’t have the basic skills needed in terms of product development, marketing and financial framework.

Another problem that is felt in Râșnov but is generally valid throughout the country is poor training of guides and disseminators in museums, churches, fortifications and other tourist attractions in terms of methods of interpreting information, involving visitors and facilitating educational experiences during visits to these cultural sites.

Project ‘Heritage Hub Râșnov’ aims to address all these areas of development.