Slovenia is extremely rich in cultural heritage (29,359 units registered in the register of immovable cultural heritage, of which 8,470 units are declared as cultural monuments), but unfortunately, this has been insufficiently known, digitized and valorised in tourism. Aware of the importance and opportunities of including cultural heritage in the tourism offer, and of the potential of 3D digitization of built heritage for various purposes of study, research and promotion, through the national project »Digital Innovation of Cultural Heritage«, Slovenia created over 100 units of digitized cultural heritage (plus over 30 new 5-star tourist products that involved over 1000 stakeholders such local providers, organizations, and residents in the realization). This 3D collection is now made available on Europeana.eu – the biggest European portal on digital cultural heritage, history and local studies. Slovenian motivation is to offer our cultural heritage wider in Europe and also globally.
High-quality 3D models can be used for various purposes of Europeana users, and also for creating synergies with other foreign heritage, recognizing connections from the similar historical styles, heritage research, tourism promotion… This is a very important milestone for Slovenia as this will be the largest 3D content shared to Europeana from Slovenia. We expect to achieve wider recognition of our cultural and natural heritage. Moreover, we expect this effort to also generate higher incoming to cultural heritage tourism in the country (as nowadays approx. 30% of tourists visit Slovenia because of our cultural heritage gems).