The Eastern Orthodox religion as a cultural bridge was a tourism, business and content production project based on the Eastern Orthodox tradition and present culture, which was designed to compile and make the mutual cultural heritage of the regions available to the public. Th e project would start with the collection of databases, which would then be used for creating guides and maps in Finnish, Russian and English and would present images, objects and chronicles. An essential part of the project would be defi ning an orthodox theme route from the New Valaam to Russia via Niirala. Th e project would operate in close cooperation with the development project Runon ja rajan tien kehittämishanke (the Route of the Poem and the Border).