Cyril Isnart

 

The Qantara, Mediterranean Heritage and Eastern and Western Crossings project is typical of public initiatives created to highlight Mediterranean cultural heritage, combining a scholarly approach with a desire to build bridges between the Christian and Muslim sides of the Mediterranean. Funded by the European Union (through the Euromed Heritage programme, part of the Barcelona Process to strengthen ties between Europe and its southern neighbours), Qantara exists as part of wider international cooperation to strengthen the management and publicity of the heritage of countries around the Mediterranean.

Launched in the mid-2000's, Qantara (meaning bridge in Arabic) is managed by the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris and combines a temporary exhibition and an on-line database, both of which focus on the architectural, personal, scientific, technical and intangible heritage of Europe and the Arab-Muslim world.

More than 200 experts have written hundreds of descriptions of objects in the collections of the museums and ministries of culture of Spain, France, the Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. A complex historical thesaurus allows you to browse index cards showing many aspects of the Mediterranean, from great architectural monuments to the humblest stories of everyday life. From literature to architecture, from war to religious life, we can access objects and their descriptions by theme, by political dynasties or by the materials used, while videos explore particular links between the southern and northern Mediterranean or specific local or historical aspects. The temporary exhibition showcases the aesthetic and social bridges as well as the differences which have always made up the Mediterranean – and still do. It has been presented in France at the Institut du Monde Arabe, in Morocco and Russia while German, Turkish and English versions of the site have been put online recently.

Imbued with a very museum-orientated, scholarly approach, the project tries, in accordance with the E.U.'s Barcelona process, to raise the awareness of the different peoples to help them understand their differences, the otherness. It also wants to highlight things Mediterranean civilizations have in common and promote inter-change within the world of the cultural heritage conservation similar to the inter-change between citizens across the region.

 

Collectif, Qantara. Patrimoines méditerranéen. Traversées d’Orient et d’Occident, Paris, Hazan, 2008.

Project web-site and database: http://www.qantara-med.org

The Euromed Heritage web-site: http://www.euromedheritage.net/index.cfm?menuID=13

Qantara web-site: http://www.qantara-med.org

Isnart C. 2012, L’invention méditerranéenne du patrimoine. Images et usages du patrimoine culturel en Méditerranée, Med-Mem, en ligne…