Cyril and Methodius Route
Paths of the Apostles of the Slavs
cultural-heritagePan-European (Greece, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Serbia)Multi-country, self-paced0 places
COE Certified Cultural Route
This is an officially certified Cultural Route of the Council of Europe
The Cyril and Methodius Route traces the journeys of the Byzantine missionaries who created the Glagolitic alphabet and brought literacy and Christianity to the Slavic peoples.
Examining Cross-Border Cultural Tourism as an Indicator of Territorial Integration across the Slovak–Hungarian Border
Tamás Hardi, Marcell Kupi, Gyula Ocskay (2021)
Sustainability
18 citationsView on OpenAlex
Religious Tourism in the South-Moravian and Zlín Regions: Proposal for Three New Pilgrimage Routes
Miroslav Horák, Alice Kozumplíková, Kristina Somerlíková (2015)
European Countryside
8 citationsView on OpenAlex
Relics of St. Constantine-Cyril in Slovakia
Peter Ivanič (2021)
Konštantínove listy/Constantine s Letters
6 citationsView on OpenAlex
Religious Routes in Slovakia
Alfred Krogmann, Hilda Kramáreková, Lucia Petrikovičová (2023)
Konštantínove listy/Constantine s Letters
3 citationsView on OpenAlex
The Route of Cyril and Methodius as an Opportunity for the Use and Interpretation of the Common Euporean Cultural Heritage
Martin Peterka (2016)
Konštantínove listy/Constantine s Letters
2 citationsView on OpenAlex
Data from OpenAlex, a free and open catalog of scholarly works.
The Journey
The Cyril and Methodius Route traces the journeys of the Byzantine brothers Cyril (826–869) and Methodius (815–885), who created the first written alphabet for the Slavic languages — the Glagolitic script (predecessor of the Cyrillic) — and undertook a mission to Moravia that transformed the cultural and spiritual history of central and eastern Europe.
Born in Thessaloniki to a Greek military family, the brothers were scholars at the imperial court in Constantinople before being sent by Emperor Michael III to the Slavic principality of Moravia in 863. They brought with them the Glagolitic alphabet and the first Slavic translations of liturgical texts — the Gospels, the Psalter, the liturgy — creating the conditions for Slavic literacy and independent cultural development.
The route connects the key sites of their lives and mission: Thessaloniki (their birthplace), Constantinople (their scholarly formation), the Crimea (Cyril's early mission to the Khazars, where he found relics of Saint Clement), Moravia (the Great Moravian mission), Rome (where they defended the Slavonic liturgy before the Pope and Cyril died), and Bulgaria and Serbia (where Methodius's disciples continued the work, developing the Cyrillic script).
The route is fundamental to understanding the cultural and spiritual development of Eastern and Central Europe.