On "fake-cation": Tourist replicas around the world

These days, you don’t have to go all the way to Paris just to see the Eiffel Tower. Living in Germany? There’s one in Berlin. Living in the US? There’s one in Las Vegas. Living in China? Lucky: there’s one in Shenzhen and another in Hangzhou.

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Recent years, plus the increasing costs of vacation travel, have given rise to the growing trend of replica tourist attractions. Popular reconstructions include the Eiffel Tower, the Lascaux cave paintings, the Taj Mahal, and the Valley of Kings.

The construction of replica monuments is a response to the growing tourist traffic at the original sites. Thousands of tourists walking through an area may cause changes in temperature and humidity, which ultimately damages ancient wall décor.

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The solution lay in the hands of companies such as the Madrid-based Factum Arte, which employ special scanning systems to create highly accurate reproductions of ancient structures. The result? Cast elements as close to the original as can be, thanks to 3D scanning technology that is able to measure up to 100 million points every square meter of a cave or underground tomb.

Copying a monument has numerous benefits for all concerned. For one, the original is kept safe, and is easy to maintain. Tourists will be able to view the most accurate replicas of these legendary sites, in places much more convenient for them. Revenues from the tourists visiting the replicas can also be redirected toward the preservation of the originals, allowing them to be more properly scrutinized by researchers and scholars.

Image Source: www.nationalgeographic.com

So whether it’s an Eiffel Tower in China, a Taj Mahal in Bangladesh, or King Tut’s Tomb in the UK, replica tourism is a good idea that is likely to be around for a while.

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