European Heritage Days: 70 thousand events in September and October. 2020’s theme, “Heritage and Education: learning for life!”

As usual, the European Heritage Days, a joint initiative started in 1999 by the Council of Europe and by the European Commission, consisting of a number of cultural events among the most popular in Europe, will be starting in early September. “Because of its pan-European nature, the programme – as explained in a notice jointly issued in Strasbourg and Brussels – helps bring the citizens together and highlight the European dimension of the cultural heritage in the 50 States that have signed the European Cultural Convention”. According to the promoters of the initiative, over 70 thousand events will be organised before the end of October (30 million of visitors are expected to attend them) “to raise public awareness of the value of this common heritage and the need to preserve it for present and future generations”. In 2020, the European Heritage Days, #EuropeanHeritageDays, “celebrate the role played by education in making the cultural heritage known and the role of the cultural heritage in education”. As well as “being a plentiful learning aid, the educational heritage opens the doors to discover our common European past and our many traditions, which we take for granted nowadays. From the key role played by Latin in the Middle Ages for scholars all over Europe to its current use in law, science and technology, there are multiple educational connections that we still share across our European borders”.
Valentina Bombelli