The Alto Douro Landscape and Vineries: World Heritage with Literary and Artistic Potential

Resumo

The Douro, the river that lends its name to a region, and deemed a cultural landscape of universal value by UNESCO in 2001, has long since been as a source of inspiration for writers, filmmakers and artists. With this article, with some of the most important contemporary intellectuals as our company, we seek to voyage through this fictional environment, which welcomed many such cultured travellers that toured here and all contributing in one way or another to this region attaining its universal heritage status.
Taking the river Douro as our guide, we set out on this journey with a brief description of the Alto Douro Wine region and the reasons justifying its candidacy. We then advance with a reflection on the relation between this landscape, Literature, Arts and Tourism. We then subsequently summarise some of the literary promotional initiatives implemented in the period since the region received its UNESCO recognition and correspondingly presenting some of the national and international 19th and 20th centuries intellectuals that might, through their works, motivate a journey through these lands. Between what remains and what changes, we close with some final considerations as to the great tourism potential of this region.