Endangered Religious Cultural Heritage: Spatial Distribution, Tourism Design, and Heritage Narratives from a Protection and Enhancement Perspective in The Carpathian Region

In the Carpathian region, there are numerous churches of different denominations built in different architectural styles, including masterpieces of wooden architecture, which are of particular interest from both a cognitive and pilgrimage perspective. The churches of wooden architecture in the Carpathian region are the subject of excursions and cognitive religious tourism, and some of them are included in the UNESCO heritage list. The paper aims to represent and interpret this religious heritage through the narration of places, understood as "topoi" endowed with distinctive identities. The religious heritage of wooden churches is in fact the identity expression of ethnic minorities; identity is substantiated in architecture through the use of particular construction techniques. Starting from the analysis of the heritage of wooden churches in the Carpathian region, the paper intends to propose innovative ways of multiple immersive narratives where the built religious heritage assumes the function of a tool capable of restoring the narrated reality and acting as a support for a hermeneutics of places. Constructing narratives of these places is very important for the preservation of the heritage of wooden churches, which today is experiencing many threats. In addition to bearing witness to local identity processes and conflicts and cooperation between different religions, they are able to increase the attractiveness of their territory and invite and guide visitors to come into contact with these places and establish an empathetic and reciprocal relationship with them