Architectural Tourism

Book excerpt: Since the era of pre-industrial religious pilgrimages, architecture has beckoned travellers. This book charts the relationship, and even the entanglement, between architecture and tourism. It reveals how architecture is always tied to its physical site, yet is transportable in our imagination--and into the virtual spheres of social media and armchair travel. Illustrated with a range of studies of key buildings from history and the present-day, the book engagingly sheds light on topics such as the culture of ruins, the evolution of how tourists capture images of places, the rise of the designer museum, and architecture on television, film, and in other media. It asks why architectural monuments and buildings attract and compel us to visit, why we feel the need to understand cities through architectural sites such as museums, historic sites, and monuments, and how national identity is galvanised through its architecture and tourism. Sightseeing is, whether virtual or actual, site-seeing.