Marginal places and tourism: the role of Buddhist centers in Italy

Religious tourism in Italy has always been an attractor at aninternational level. For many centuries, it has been entirelyrepresented by the Christian pilgrimage to St. Peter’s Basilica. Inrecent decades, however, the religious scenery has changeddeeply, and now includes even non-Christian religions andspiritualities. In this paper we compare two (very different)Buddhist centers, both located in places of Italy where tourism isnot (or is no more) a significant component of the local economy.Buddhist centers are increasingly becoming popular touristattraction: our purpose is to investigate to what extent and underwhich conditions they can be actors of local tourismdevelopment. The most significant of these conditions seems tobe the nature of the center itself, ranging from a hermitagerelatively unconcerned about any quantitative development, to astructure where spiritual ends are reconciled both with expansionand with economic integration within the local community.