Europe celebrates Year of Cultural Heritage

You’ve been planning a trip to Europe for so long, but didn’t get the chance to actually start your journey. Here’s one more reason to begin it now – the European Year of Cultural Heritage.

This year, multiple European countries celebrate the Year of Cultural Heritage, which involves different kinds of activities, including tours of monuments and gardens, interesting museum exhibitions, musical, theater and dance performances and various festivals. Below, a list of several events tourists can enjoy for the rest of the year. Worth mentioning is that some of these events have free entry.

 

Germany – Sharing Heritage

There are several activities scheduled in Germany throughout the year, one of them is the Handel Festival, which is held in Halle between 25th of May and 10th of June. It’s a Baroque homage dedicated to Handel, a German composer.

Tourists passionate about opera shows should consider going to Halle Opera, where they have the chance to see a new production of “Berenice, Regina d’Egitto, HWV38”.

An exhibition held in Berlin at the Museum Europäischer Kulturen and entitled “I Never Said Goodbye/Women in Exile” presents interesting photographs of women who live in exile in Berlin, took by Heike Steinweg.

Scotland – Festival of Museums

Scotland will host more than 150 different events at various museums throughout the region between May 18 and May 20. Some of these events are for free, as it is the case of Kinneil House and another neighboring museum, which will have free entry in the evening and will hold a bat spotting on the grounds, as well as other activities.

The Kinneil Estate which hosts the house and the museum, will lead tours and people will have the chance to visit a cottage which was once used by one of the world’s most famous engineers and inventors – James Watt.

England – Heritage Open Days

Heritage Open Days are the ‘largest grass roots heritage festival involving over 40,000 volunteers and 5,000 events’ in England and one of the best things about it is that it’s for free. People have the chance to visit monuments, buildings and numerous museums without paying any entry fee. There are two weekends dedicated to this festival – September 6-9 and September 13-16.

Ireland – National Heritage Week

A range of both small and big activities will be offered throughout the country between August 18-26, and many of them for free. “My Friend Picasso: 125 Photographs by Edward Quinn” is one of the exhibitions that people interested in Picasso’s life and work can attend. Edward Quinn is a photographer born in Ireland and his photographs will be available to the large public at Castletown House, in Kildare County, Ireland.

Italy – the Inteatro Festival

This is an annual festival, which was founded in 1977, will last from June 22 to July 1, somewhere in the proximity of the Adriatic Sea (in Ancona and Polverigi, more specific). This year, tourists have more than 20 shows to attend and the main themes revolving around these events are transformation and identity.

France – Une promenade dans le jardin

Those in love with garden walks should book a plane ticket and visit France in June, as more than 2000 gardens will be open to the large public. Exhibitions held in the garden, concerts and lectures will transform France and make it even more romantic than it already is.

 

Source: nytimes.com