Journeys into the Past: History as a Tourist Attraction in the 19th and 20th Centuries
Conference at the University of Siegen
November 6-8, 2014
Conveners: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Angela Schwarz, Dr. des. Daniela Fleiß
Historic sites are very popular today. They have been for a long time, as people chose them as favourite places to see and experience. The conference addresses several of the issues at hand in these past journeys into the past: Why did people seek out places as echoes of the past? What is the role of history in these specific types of touristic experience? What characterizes the touristic quality of localizing the past in a specific place? What are the effects of looking at the past from a tourist’s perspective? How and to what purpose does this process generate conceptions of the past or even of history? Papers will reflect on the character, role and functioning of this kind of tourism and its ways to popularize history.
Source: Besichtigung der Akropolis in Athen. Originalzeichnung von A. Kirchner, in: Buch für alle, Jg. 33, Heft 21, 1898, S. 508