Urban Tourism

Abstract

Since the seventeenth century, visiting cities for pleasure transformed from a predominant male elite pastime to a middle-class family activity, and finally a mass phenomenon accessible to men and women of all classes and generations. Drawing examples from a selection of European and American cities, this chapter demonstrates that motivations and experiences of urban tourists, despite evident differences and changes, also show some remarkable continuities. Not only with regard to their very first impressions of unfamiliar cities and their elementary strategies of navigating and sightseeing, but also in their enduring quest to search for spiritual enrichment through personal encounters with religion, art and history; their search for shared pleasures and exotic otherness in urban entertainment; their fascination for transgressing ethnic, class, gender, sexual, and other boundaries; as well as in their perennial hunt for souvenirs.