Български маршрути в Италия. Илюстрован пътеводител
Bulgarian Routes in Italy. An Illustrated Guide

Author(s): Anna Vlaevska-Stancheva, Krasimir Stanchev, Veneta Nenkova
Subject(s): History, Anthropology, Social Sciences, Cultural history, Customs / Folklore, Ethnohistory, Social history, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Culture and social structure
Published by: Национално издателство за образование и наука „Аз-буки“
Keywords: Bulgaria; Italy; Bulgarian presence in Italy; culture; cultural property; illustrated guide; heritage sites; intercultural exchange
Summary/Abstract: This Guide aims to be of help to any Bulgarian, who is visiting Italy and wishes to also acquaint themselves with the places connected one way or another to Bulgaria and the Bulgarian name. In a country like Italy, whose territory is home to the greatest number of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites, the traces of Bulgarian presence can be easily overlooked. However, such traces do exist, and we have attempted to present them to an interested reader/visitor here. We strove to present them objectively and fairly, without underestimation, but also without patriotic exaggerations. In the past some authors, swept away by their love for Bulgaria, have written that the names of over a hundred settlements in South Italy are Bulgar in origin, that more than three million contemporary Italians are descendants of the Bulgars, etc., even today some Bulgarian sites boast that it was Bulgarians who taught the Italians of the Tuscan town of Bolgheri how to produce wine, or that the oldest still-existing university in the world, the Bologna University, was founded by a Bulgarian… We have tried to present the facts such as they are, backed by science, and whenever science has not yielded clear answers, we have mentioned what legends some names and local beliefs are connected to, leaving the door open for further research. Our striving towards science-backed statements has caused the insertion of historical references in a few places, which is not usually the case in a guidebook. However, this book is not a scientific work: should one wish to deepen their knowledge of certain places and events, they can consult the selected bibliography or the sites we recommend. The book only includes places and cultural properties that preserve material traces of the Bulgarian presence in modern Italy. The topic of “Bulgarians in Italy” is a separate, much wider topic, to which may – and should! – be devoted a separate book. For the same reason, the biological data about the people mentioned is minimized as much as possible: they are mentioned insofar as is needed to explain their presence in Italy. We have tried to point out this presence through sites that are seeable and accessible to visit and whose location has been established once and for all. For this reason we have not included the Bulgarian diplomatic missions, which have an extraterritorial status, as well as the Bulgarian weekend schools and Bulgarian church communities, as they sadly have no permanent seats.

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