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Recommendation 987 (1984)
European pilgrim routes
The Assembly,
1. Having noted the report of its Committee on Culture and Education on the Pilgrims' Way to Santiago de Compostela and other European pilgrim routes (Doc. 5196) ;
2. Aware of the role such routes have played in the development of certain towns, in the creation of religious and secular institutions, in short, in the setting up of a veritable infrastructure for pilgrims ;
3. Stressing the important architectural heritage associated with pilgrim routes ;
4. Noting that the religious and cultural contacts resulting from this considerable movement of pilgrims across the whole of Europe constituted one of the first approaches to interculturalism and European unity ;
5. Recognising the particular historical importance of the Pilgrims' Way to Santiago de Compostela, and noting the existence in several countries of associations promoting wider knowledge of the routes involved,
6. Recommends that the Committee of Ministers, taking the Pilgrims' Way to Santiago as a starting-point that might serve as an example for other pilgrim routes :
6.1. encourage co-operation between member states in the joint preservation of international pilgrim routes- such as concerted action to ensure that the most significant routes (and the monuments on them) are inscribed in UNESCO's World Heritage List ;
6.2. ask the governments of member states to encourage those towns that may be situated on individual pilgrim routes to co-operate in joint activities related to the conservation of buildings on the routes and to making them better known, and associate the Standing Conference of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe with such an initiative ;
6.3. promote, in collaboration with European tourist organisations, cultural tourism along these routes ;
6.4. . grant the use of a special Council of Europe emblem to towns and other institutions associated with the conservation and promotion of pilgrim routes.