Throughout modern history, tourism and heritage have had an intimate and reciprocal relationship (Ashworth & van Vroger, 2005). Heritage generates tourism, and the latter, in turn, shapes the meanings, uses and physical characteristics of places of heritage, such as monuments, archaeological sites and museums, as well as townscapes and landscapes. However, academic research into this relationship has been minimal. Occasionally social scientists or economists contribute to international discussions of heritage tourism, 1 but our understanding of the historical and cultural dimensions of the relationship between the two domains is still meagre (Lasansky & Mclaren, 2004).