Interactive map with religious and cultural monuments in Macedonia and Thrace online

A walk on the internet is enough to visit religious and cultural monuments in eastern Macedonia and Thrace thanks to the great work done by Greek scientists in the program Innovative Cultural Experience (ICE). How;

Through an online map-guide for the Christian, Muslim and Jewish monuments in Drama, Kavala and Thrace.

As he explains, speaking to the Athenian/Macedonian News Agency, Angeliki Ziakaprofessor of Religion at the Theology Department of AUTH and scientific manager of the Introductory Department of Muslim Studies, it is a map (google map) “accessible in Greek, English and Turkish languages ​​(see ice.web.auth.gr) and a small deliverable of a large project, ICE, which in Greek is translated as Development of an Innovative System of Augmented Reality, with application to the promotion of cultural heritage in eastern Macedonia and Thrace”.

The project was implemented within the framework of the action “Research – Create – Innovate” and was co-financed by the European Union and national resources through EPANEK.

The action focused on how religious and cultural, material and intangible heritage can be presented in a tangible and multimedia way to young and old.

“We initially deliver a platform with many and varied exhibits that can be used in museums, exhibition spaces, and even at school, through which one browses various monuments or even objects of interfaith and cultural interest, which we have chosen for the needs of project. But until we reach this choice and the development of the innovative system, which was implemented by the Electronics Laboratory of the Physics Department of AUTH, the AETMA Laboratory of the Informatics Department of DIPAE and Prisma Electronics based in Alexandroupoli, the other bodies we were responsible for for the collection of cultural and interreligious, material and intangible heritage, that is, the Department of Theology of AUTH, the Laboratory of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Research of the Department of History and Ethnology of DTH and the MOHA Research Center in Kavala, it took 36 months – and while we included and with the pandemic – the researchers of the project to map the area of of Macedonia and Thrace in order to collect a rich cultural heritage material”, points out the AUTH professor.

“We invite researchers all over Greece something similar has been done, both by the University of Crete and for the bibliography of the Ottoman monuments of Greece –to enlarge this map“, notes Angeliki Ziaka, explaining how Greece has an extraordinary wealth of this kind that remains untapped and unknown.

“Of course, in addition to the religious monuments there are also monuments such as the Ottoman baths, which are beautiful, the few remaining tekdes, and the many turbeds. There is, in other words, a multitude of monuments, which can be highlighted in a variety of ways, we can be happy about them and pass into our consciousness as a common cultural heritage” he underlines.

The map, as APE-MEP journalist Sofia Papadopoulou notes, is available at the online address: Commemoration of Interreligious and Intercultural Routes ICE Project Map _ Intercultural and Interreligious Places.