A Tourist Guide ? A trip around the Mediterranean? and a CD-Rom ?A day in...? have been produced by the MEDINA Project. These products, complementary to MEDINA Portal and to the National Websites, have a double objective: to disseminate the Projects? results and to promote the Mediterranean region as an important tourist destination.

The Tourist Guide: ?A trip around the Mediterranean?

The trip, which focuses on classic mythology, explores, discovers and investigates previously hidden and unknown mysteries. It is a modern way of exploring, but it is also a search, surfing the Internet, and enables us to find lots of information guiding us to long and fascinating virtual trips. Travelling is a search for oneself and for the other, it is searching for what is new. Emotions lead us to the ultimate challenge of confronting ourselves and of getting in touch with what differs from us. Travelling enables us to encounter marvellous dimensions and to become aware of society?s contradictions.

The Tourist Guide was created to present the Mediterranean region, through the description of a selected number of cities representing different typologies of city: Mediterranean cities, harbour cities, MEDINA cities, cities of Greek influence, fortified cities, Roman or Byzantine cities and contemporary and modern cities. It contains a presentation of maximum 5 cities of each country for each typology. Each city is presented on one page, in English and French, accompanied by several photos.

The CD-ROM ?A day in...?

Eight Mediterranean cities, one for each participating country, open their gates to the virtual traveller, engaged in a spiritual, rather than physical, tour of its beauty. Probably not all the cities are well known to the public: our purpose is to show the quality and charm of Mediterranean life, in popular and less popular places. The narrative format consists of a number of stories - one for each city - about spending "a day in...". Each story creates the feeling of "being there" in each city, from dawn to dusk. The user can sit comfortably, listen to the stories and enjoy the pictures. The same narrative format will be adapted for the web and podcasting in the near future.

These products are examples (possibly the first item of an editorial series) of how the rich multimedia content of the MEDINA online "system " (the Portal and the National Websites) can be exploited to create a compelling narrative about cultural treasures in the Mediterranean. These materials are not only a pleasurable form of entertainment, but also a powerful tool to disseminate the MEDINA content to a large public.

For more information on the MEDINA project, please visit http://www.medinaproject.net