Sightseeing

The term sightseeing refers to the activity of visiting places of interest in a particular location. Sightseeing is a leisure activity that presupposes a difference between the ordinary—the daily routine—and the extraordinary and plays a key role in tourism. Although it is mostly connected to mass tourism, it is a practice undertaken by independent travelers, too. The act of sightseeing is embedded in every other activity in which tourists engage. The objects of sightseeing are man-made or natural attractions, such as places with historical significance (e.g., monuments, museums, and galleries), places of natural beauty (the rural landscape), structures, buildings, and theme parks. In order to examine the term, it is useful to retrace first its course of development through time, from its birth in the ...