FAVORING AND DISFAVORING FACTORS FOR CULTURAL TOURISM EXPLOITING OF HISTORICAL MONUMENTS IN TRANSYLVANIA, ROMANIA

Each historical province of Romania has a significant number of monuments, the cultural value of which can be used to create opportunities for tourism development of some geographical areas or localities. The study seeks to identify these monuments, capable of meeting the requirements imposed by the cultural-tourist activity through: accessibility, originality, seniority, maintenance or level of rehabilitation and promotion. The geographically analyzed area is the historical and geographical province of Transylvania, Romania. It is a province with a great historical load, and the presence of monuments has a rather high density. The steps taken to carry out this study followed, first of all, the crossing of the List of Cultural Monuments issued by the Ministry of Culture of Romania. The second stage is the individual analysis on the field of each monument mentioned in the list, as well as the identification of the appropriate level of cultural and tourist valorization, according to the mentioned criteria. The results of the study show, first of all, a difference between the large number of existing cultural monuments and the value of which is undoubtedly quite high by what they represent historically, and the smaller number of monuments that can be valorized from the cultural and tourism point of view. The requirements of the tourists and, generally, of the tourist activity, do not allow the entry and usage of the monuments that have very low levels of accessibility, originality or rehabilitation within touristic circuits or tourist offerings.