Page 57 - World Heritage and Tourism Innovation

Raffaela Gabriella Rizzo An intangible cultural heritage asset

Does the Fact that it is Part of UNESCO’s Intangible Is the Tourist and Day Visitor Who Arrives in Cremona
Heritage Help Actors to Highlight and Promote Cremona Aware that he or she is Visiting One of UNESCO’s
as a Place Where Stringed Instruments are Made? “Intangible” Sites?
The rationale behind this question draws inspiration This latter question, again asked to the district’s actors
partly from the article by Qiu, Zuo and Zhang, Intan- and (in this phase, because of the current pandemic,
gible Cultural Heritage in Tourism: Research Review it was not possible to reach tourists) not to the tour-
and Investigation of Future Agenda, in which the au- ists themselves, is imprinted on the vision and per-
thors conduct a review of academic studies regarding ception that the tourist has of the intangible heritage
the relationship between tourism and ICH, reflecting represented by ‘violin making in Cremona’. It draws
on how ICH influences the process of place-making: its inspiration – though with a qualitative investiga-
“the image and emotion perceived from ICH deserve tion – from studies regarding the impact of tourism
more research, and place-making results within and on the inscription of heritage (tangible or intangible)
without ICH elements should be clearer. For example, of other resources inserted in the UNESCO list. These
what is the role of ICH in place-making and place- analyses investigate whether such inclusions in the list
making? How does ICH contribute to tourists’ cogni- - in so far as they guarantee the (intrinsic) value of the
tion and emotion in the place-making process? How heritage being visited – do or do not become a feature
do tangible and intangible heritages bring differences of attraction for the tourist (Huang et al., 2012; Iva-
in place making?” (Gasparini, 2017; Qiu et al., 2022, nunik et al., 2021; Bak et al., 2019; Canale et al., 2019;
p. 15). De Simone et al., 2019; Mariani & Giuzzardi, 2020).

Figure 2 Location of the Province of Cremona
Source by the Author using QGIS 3.34.4 and OpenStreetMap carthography

Proceedings of the 7th UNESCO UNITWIN Conference | 53