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Field of Dreams (Dubuque County, Iowa)

Pop-culture tourism is the act of traveling to locations featured in literature, film, music, or any other form of popular entertainment.

Popular destinations have included:

• Los Angeles, California film studios.
• The Dyersville, Iowa cornfields featured in Field of Dreams
• New Zealand after The Lord of the Rings was filmed there
• Tom's Restaurant which is known to many as Monk's from Seinfeld
• Prince Edward Island, in which the Canadian novel Anne of Green Gables takes place, is a popular attraction for tourists, notably from Japan.
• South Korea because of the recent Hallyu phenomenon in East Asia.
• Japan for japanophiles or lovers of Japanese pop-culture.
• North Bend, Washington and in particular Twede's Cafe where much of the television show Twin Peaks was shot.
• Roslyn, Washington, which stood in for Cicely, Alaska in the television show Northern Exposure.
• Tunisia, location of the filming of the Star Wars movies.
• Pin Oak Court, Vermont South, Victoria, a suburban Melbourne shooting location for internationally popular soap opera Neighbours
• Santa Ynez Valley in Central California where much of Sideways took place.
• Burkittsville, Maryland, where tourists re-create the most gruesome scenes from The Blair Witch Project.
• Salzburg, Austria, where many scenes from the musical The Sound of Music were filmed.

Pop-culture tourism is in some respects akin to pilgrimage, with its modern equivalents of places of pilgrimage, such as Elvis Presley's Graceland and the grave of Jim Morrison in Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Another pop-culture tourism destination is Vulcan, Alberta Canada. In the early 1990s this small rural community began to explore ways it could capitalize on the coincidence of the Town's name being the same as popular Star Trek Character, Mr. Spock's home planet: Vulcan, to develop its local tourism industry.

See also

• Alnwick Castle[1], England The Location of Hogwarts in Harry Potter
• Tobermory[2], Mull, Isle of Mull, Scotland The Location of the popular children's programme Balamory
• Rosslyn Chapel[3], Scotland and Lincoln Cathedral, England Locations used in The Da Vinci Code film
• William Wallace Monument[4], Scotland, Saw a visitor rise of 160,000 after the film Braveheart

• Grand Tour

External links

• Travel + Leisure Magazine - On Location May 2006 article about pop-culture tourism.
• Reel Adventure Movie Tour of Alberta, Canada Enjoy the movies filmed in Alberta then use the map to see the sights.