Retroland

Clever, lightweight essays on the fascination of traveling to the past – because heritage tourism is trending. But why is that? What are we searching for in "Retroland"? Geranium-adorned historic old towns, colonial idylls on tropical islands, and primitive Alpine villages: traveling to places where time seems to have stood still is the everyday business of tourism. The renowned historian Valentin Groebner reveals the hotspots of heritage tourism – which, surprisingly, has existed for 500 years! He takes his readers to Piedmont and Paris, to the mountains and picturesque beaches, to romantic Lucerne and picturesque Sri Lanka. The real raw material of the tourism industry, he shows, is not culture, sun, and landscape. It is the promise of finding paradise, but also one's own origins, the authentic, and more.