Integrated approach to museology: proposal for a route linking archaeological sites in Canakkale, Turkey

Museums represent institutions connected to local communities and their cultural life. Museums are not confined to a building and its collections, but may be located in 'open-air' spaces, allowing a tangible relationship between people and the surrounding landscape to be studied.Based on this ecological understanding, we would like to apply Gambardela's idea of an "Mediterranean Museum System of Design and Applied Arts" to the Turkish context. The idea is for an integrated museum system to link different archaeological and handcraft sites along D550 road from Canakkale to Assos. Archaeological and handcraft sites are chosen due to their heritage significance and impact on tourism in Turkey. The route from Canakkale to Assos has been less explored in terms of tourism and poses an opportunity to work with the local government to devise sustainable interventions. An inventory of the cultural landscape as well as strategies for landscape branding will be used to promote a sustainable intervention and to serve as a catalyst for the cultural and economic transformation of that region. The paper emphasizes an action-oriented approach to museology and concludes by asserting the role of architecture and landscape design in shaping cultural heritage and tourism in a sustainable way