Planning Micro-Routes in Cultural Tourism: Monastery Route in Ovčar-Kablar Gorge, Serbia

The last few years have completely changed Serbian tourism. The COVID-19 Pandemics, closed borders as its consequence and the general rise of standard have redirected Serbian population from once-in-year seaside travel to multiple short travels in Serbia. This new impulse in tourism has opened many opportunities for more remoted regions in the country with preserved heritage. One such region in Ovčar-Kablar Gorge in Western Serbia, near the city of Čačak. The magnificent scenery of the gorge is under state protection as a landscape of outstanding features. It is in addition “enriched” by cultural heritage – nine monasteries, two forest churches and one cave-church, developed between the 14th-18th centuries. The concentration of the sacral heritage is so important locally that the gorge is unofficially known as “Serbian Athos”. This paper presents the recent efforts done in the local spatial plan, created by “Gradac” Public Enterprise from Čačak, to address this potential through the development of cultural-tourist micro-route in the gorge.