An Ethnographic Probe into Tourists’ Sense of Place in Cultural Heritage in Shiraz

This paper is to provide a thematic network of sense of place among internal tourists in the context of historical and cultural heritage in Shiraz. Ethnographical qualitative methodology has been used in this study. Informants in this study were among 25 internal tourists that have been selected through purposive sampling. In order to analyze the primary Data, thematic network analysis has been used. In the six-stage process of  analysis, 31 primary codes were depleted to five basic themes: sensual efflorescence, sense of belonging to a place, Aesthetical perception, being in a safe place, exhilarating architecture, two organizing themes: spirit-oriented memory and place-oriented memory and a global theme: historical-cultural memory recreation. Comprehensive the thematic network in this study shows that tourists in the historical cultural heritage of Shiraz experience a collection of senses of place which can be considered as: historical-cultural memory recreation that shows a person's relationship with place, past, others and himself. These relationships somehow reinforces the personal, cultural, historical and national identities of people.