The Schist Villages Network is a sustainable development project of a regional scope, promoted by ADXTUR — Agência para o Desenvolvimento Turístico das Aldeias do Xisto, in a partnership witj 16 counties of the Centre Region and over 70 operators with businesses on this territory. ADXTUR is in this fashion the joining of forces, both public and private, for the promotion of a territory, the criation of wealth through touristic services and the preservation of the culture, the heritage of the rural Inland Portugal. Through a coordinated development of this land, against the human desert, against oblivion.
 

During the last years, the 24 villages in Aldeias do Xisto were benefited from a restoration project that let them gather human potential for development: the “Program of the Aldeias do Xisto” had as fundamental vectors the recovery of traditions, the valorisation of the existing architectural heritage, giving impulse to tradicional arts and trades and defending and preserving the surrounding landscape. This important work, promoted by the Commission for Coordenation and Regional Development of the Central Region (Comissão de Coordenação e Desenvolvimento Regional do Centro – CCDRC), never lost sight of what was its prime objective: to better the quality of life of people living in villages, raising their self-esteem, ennobling their social fabric and joining them in a participative project that is, before anything else, theirs. Nowadays, the Aldeias do Xisto have become very attractive places for tourists, sufficiently dynamic to the point of having created a new economic base of capturing visitors and of private investment.