Presenting the Hammam al-Pasha: Conserving Heritage by ...

Chapter One
Documenting a Tourist Experience
An extensive process of documentation occurs prior to any conservation project, where
conservation architects and engineers record and catalogue the history, the architectural features,
and the structural pathologies of an archaeological or historical building. This chapter applies the
framework of architectural documentation to the analysis of a touristic phenomenon, surveying
the tourist experience as tourists explore the Hammam al-Pasha in June 2011 2 . In order to record
the 'tourist experience' of the Hammam al-Pasha at this specific moment in time, our
documentation will replace the typical elements of an architectural documentation report and
instead address the history of the development of the site as a tourist attraction; provide a
thorough description of the site as a 'tourist experience'; and include an inventory of the various
off-site markers of the attraction.
HISTORICIZING THE HAMMAM AL-PASHA TOURIST EXPERIENCE
Photo 3: Map of Hammam al-Pasha's location in
Old Akko's north section, adjacent to the Citadel
and al-Jazzar's Mosque (Conservation
Documentation File 2003).
2 The significance and urgency of documenting the Hammam al-Pasha tourist experience stems from the possibility
of its re-design; the Old Acre Development Company re-evaluates its tourist program every 10 years.
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