Religious Tourism’s Impact on City Space: Service Zones around Sanctuaries

Abstract

Pilgrimage centers are important elements of the spatial structure of cities and simultaneously factors influencing their transformations. The pilgrimage function of sanctuaries can lead to development of service zones around them focused mainly on serving visitors, i.e., pilgrims and tourists. They often perform functions complementary to sanctuaries. Here we present the results of studies of sanctuary service zones conducted at twenty six popular Catholic sanctuaries in Europe. In this paper, we discussed the influence of the sanctuary on city space on the macro, meso and micro scales. We proposed a definition of a sanctuary service zone, and developed a model approach to the different types: initial (slightly developed) zones, dispersed zones (integrated into the urban space, with their pilgrimage function coexisting with other urban functions), and compact zones—linear, or pilgrimage districts (with dominating pilgrimage function). The development of sanctuary service zones depends mainly on the rank of the pilgrimage center, as well as on the period in which it was founded, pilgrimage traditions, and the location of the pilgrimage center in the city. This paper is a continuation and extension of research into the impact of pilgrimage centers on city space transformations in the context of socio-cultural changes in the 20th and 21st centuries.

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