Cultural Landscape and Tourism: The Case of Aipos in Chios

Cultural landscape is a term used to describe the symbiosis of human activity and environment. Hence, it may be seen as the environment modified by the human being over time, subject, of course, to the physical constraints limiting and conditioning human intervention. In the words of an eminent human geographer, the cultural landscape is fashioned from natural landscape by a cultural group. Culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, and the cultural landscape is the result. The active use of cultural landscape in tourism may have a positive influence on destination recognition and heritage revitalization, thus improving the global competitiveness and sustainable development of a tourist site. Adopting a cultural landscape perspective may interlink individual aspects of cultural heritage into a unified notion of identity and place. Attention, however, should be given to the attitudes and behavior of the tourism industry, and measures should be taken to prevent the marginalization of the “host” community, the privatization and commoditization of local culture and eventually the alteration of the local identity. The paper looks firstly into the concept of cultural landscape at an international level, its origins, development, current state and future prospects. At a second level, focusing on the case of Greece, it will examine the case of Aipos, a very interesting but undeveloped plateau in Chios.