Sightseeing places of the world a tourist attraction

Sightseeing places of the world

A tourist attraction is a place of interest that tourists visit, typically for its inherent or an exhibited natural or cultural value, historical significance, natural or built beauty, offering leisure and amusement. Places of natural beauty such as beaches, tropical island resorts, national parks, mountains, deserts and forests, are examples of traditional tourist attractions which people may visit. Cultural tourist attractions can include historical places, sites of significant historic event, monuments, ancient temples, zoos, aquaria, museums and art galleries, botanical gardens, buildings and structures (such as forts, castles, libraries, former prisons, skyscrapers, bridges), theme parks and carnivals, living history museums, public art (sculptures, statues, murals), ethnic enclave communities, historic trains and cultural events. Factory tours, industrial heritage, creative art and crafts workshops are the object of cultural niches like industrial tourism and creative tourism. Many tourist attractions are also landmarks. But sports events such as a soccer game, Formula 1 race or sailing regatta can also attract tourists.
Tourists' expectations when visiting a particular place are related to several features of the chosen destination: culture, architecture, gastronomy, infrastructure, landscape, events, shopping, etc. These features attract people to the destination and contribute to the overall experience of the trip.^[2] The ultimate primary purpose of attractions is to attract the customer's attention so that they can come to a specific location and explore the various attractions on vacation. In the travel and tourism industry, attractions therefore play a particularly important role as this attracts tourists from all over the world.^[3][4][5]
Tourist attractions are also created to capitalize on legends such as a supposed UFO crash site near Roswell, New Mexico and the alleged Loch Ness monster sightings in Scotland. Ethnic communities may become tourist attractions, such as Chinatowns in the United States and the black British neighborhood of Brixton in London, England. Tourists also look for special local culinary experiences such as street kitchens in Asian metropolises^[6] or the coffeehouse culture in Central Europe. In particular, cultural property and the individual places of the UNESCO World Heritage Site have developed into tourist attractions. If too many tourists frequent individual places, this can lead to environmental pollution and resistance from the local population, such as in Barcelona or Venice. With regard to this whole subject, there are already lists of destinations that are not recommended to tourists.^{[7][8][9][10]}
Miramare Castle, Trieste - one of the main tourist attractions in Northern Italy, which is mainly visited by Italians.
There are innumerable lists and reviews of tourist attractions. Visitor statistics, cultural significance, beauty or age are used and these always reflect the author's personal assessments. Sometimes it is particularly emphasized that this particular tourist attraction has not yet been in the focus of the international tourism industry. Some of the sights are internationally known or target the national or local market. Some attractions are reserved for the local population or are rarely advertised because the main traffic routes and main airports are too far away.
Deserts like the Sahara are also tourist attractions.
In the United States, owners and marketers of attractions advertise tourist attractions on billboards along the sides of highways and roadways, especially in remote areas. Tourist attractions often distribute free promotional brochures to be displayed in rest areas, information centers, fast food restaurants, and motel rooms or lobbies.
While some tourist attractions provide visitors a memorable experience for a reasonable admission charge or even for free, others may be of low quality and overprice their goods and services (such as admission, food, and souvenirs) in order to profit excessively from tourists. Such places are commonly known as tourist traps.^[11] Within cities, rides on boats and sightseeing buses are sometimes popular.
The Vatican Museums (Italian: Musei Vaticani; Latin: Musea Vaticana) are the public museums of the Vatican City. They display works from the immense collection amassed by the Catholic Church and the papacy throughout the centuries, including several of the most renowned Roman sculptures and most important masterpieces of Renaissance art in the world. The museums contain roughly 70,000 works, of which 20,000 are on display,^[1] and currently employ 640 people who work in 40 different administrative, scholarly, and restoration departments.^[4]
Pope Julius II founded the museums in the early 16th century.^[5] The Sistine Chapel, with its ceiling and altar wall decorated by Michelangelo, and the Stanze di Raffaello (decorated by Raphael) are on the visitor route through the Vatican Museums.^[6]
In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Vatican Museums were visited by only 1,300,000 persons, a drop of 81 percent from the number of visitors in 2019, but still enough to rank the museums fourth among the most-visited art museums in the world.^[7]
There are 24 galleries, or rooms, in total, with the Sistine Chapel, notably, being the last room visited within the Museum.^[
The Vatican Museums trace their origin to one marble sculpture, purchased in the 16th century: Laocoön and His Sons was discovered on 14 January 1506, in a vineyard near the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Pope Julius II sent Giuliano da Sangallo and Michelangelo, who were working at the Vatican, to examine the discovery.^[9] On their recommendation, the Pope immediately purchased the sculpture from the vineyard owner. The Pope put the sculpture, which represents the Trojan priest Laocoön and his two sons, Antiphantes and Thymbraeus being attacked by giant serpents, on public display at the Vatican exactly one month after its discovery.^[10][11]
Benedict XIV founded the Museum Christianum, and some of the Vatican collections formed the Lateran Museum, which Pius IX founded by decree in 1854.^[12]
The museums celebrated their 500th anniversary in October 2006 by permanently opening the excavations of a Vatican Hill necropolis to the public.^[13]
On 1 January 2017, Barbara Jatta became the Director of the Vatican Museums, replacing Antonio Paolucci who had been director since 2007.^[14][15]
The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system^[1][2] composed of over 2,900 individual reefs^[3] and 900 islands stretching for over 2,300 kilometres (1,400 mi) over an area of approximately 344,400 square kilometres (133,000 sq mi).^[4][5] The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, Australia, separated from the coast by a channel 100 miles wide in places and over 200 feet deep.^[6] The Great Barrier Reef can be seen from outer space and is the world's biggest single structure made by living organisms.^[7] This reef structure is composed of and built by billions of tiny organisms, known as coral polyps.^[8] It supports a wide diversity of life and was selected as a World Heritage Site in 1981.^[1][2] CNN labelled it one of the seven natural wonders of the world in 1997.^[9] Australian World Heritage places included it in its list in 2007.^[10] The Queensland National Trust named it a state icon of Queensland in 2006.^[11]
A large part of the reef is protected by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which helps to limit the impact of human use, such as fishing and tourism. Other environmental pressures on the reef and its ecosystem include runoff, climate change accompanied by mass coral bleaching, dumping of dredging sludge and cyclic population outbreaks of the crown-of-thorns starfish.^[12] According to a study published in October 2012 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the reef has lost more than half its coral cover since 1985, a finding reaffirmed by a 2020 study which found over half of the reef's coral cover to have been lost between 1995 and 2017, with the effects of a widespread 2020 bleaching event not yet quantified.^[13][14]
The Great Barrier Reef has long been known to and used by the Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and is an important part of local groups' cultures and spirituality. The reef is a very popular destination for tourists, especially in the Whitsunday Islands and Cairns regions. Tourism is an important economic activity for the region, generating over AUD$3 billion per year.^[15] In November 2014, Google launched Google Underwater Street View in 3D of the Great Barrier Reef.^[16]
A March 2016 report stated that coral bleaching was more widespread than previously thought, seriously affecting the northern parts of the reef as a result of warming ocean temperatures.^[17] In October 2016, Outside published an obituary for the reef;^[18] the article was criticized for being premature and hindering efforts to bolster the resilience of the reef.^[19] In March 2017, the journal Nature published a paper showing that huge sections of an 800-kilometre (500 mi) stretch in the northern part of the reef had died in the course of 2016 due to high water temperatures, an event that the authors put down to the effects of global climate change.^[20] The percentage of baby corals being born on the Great Barrier Reef dropped drastically in 2018 and scientists are describing it as the early stage of a "huge natural selection event unfolding". Many of the mature breeding adults died in the bleaching events of 2016–17 leading to low coral birth rates. The types of corals that reproduced also changed, leading to a "long-term reorganisation of the reef ecosystem if the trend continues."^[21]
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act 1975 (section 54) stipulates an Outlook Report on the Reef's health, pressures, and future every five years. The last report was published in 2019.^[22] In March 2022, another mass bleaching event has been confirmed, which raised further concerns about the future of this reef system, especially when considering the possible effects of El Niño weather phenomenon.^[23]
The Taj Mahal (/ˌtɑːdʒ məˈhɑːl, ˌtɑːʒ-/; lit. 'Crown of the Palace'),^[4][5][6] is an Islamic ivory-white marble mausoleum on the right bank of the river Yamuna in the Indian city of Agra. It was commissioned in 1631 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (r. 1628–1658) to house the tomb of his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal; it also houses the tomb of Shah Jahan himself. The tomb is the centrepiece of a 17-hectare (42-acre) complex, which includes a mosque and a guest house, and is set in formal gardens bounded on three sides by a crenellated wall.
Construction of the mausoleum was essentially completed in 1643, but work continued on other phases of the project for another 10 years. The Taj Mahal complex is believed to have been completed in its entirety in 1653 at a cost estimated at the time to be around ₹32 million, which in 2020 would be approximately ₹70 billion (about US $1 billion). The construction project employed some 20,000 artisans under the guidance of a board of architects led by the court architect to the emperor, Ustad Ahmad Lahauri. Various types of symbolism have been employed in the Taj to reflect natural beauty and divinity.
The Taj Mahal was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983 for being "the jewel of Muslim art in India and one of the universally admired masterpieces of the world's heritage". It is regarded by many as the best example of Mughal architecture and a symbol of India's rich history. The Taj Mahal attracts more than 6 million visitors a year^[3] and in 2007, it was declared a winner of the New 7 Wonders of the World (2000–2007) initiative.